“Spider Woman’s Daughter” by Anne Hillerman

Between 1970 and 2008, Tony Hillerman (1925-2008) published 19 mystery novels featuring Navajo policeman Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. Set mostly in the Navajo lands of northeastern Arizona and northwestern New Mexico, these mystery novels introduced Navajo culture and history in a very accessible way to a broad American readership.

I loved the Leaphorn and Chee mysteries. Hillerman not only told a great story; he also communicated his love and respect for a people and culture too many people simply called “Indian.” Through Hillerman, his readers learned the sacredness of Navajo geography, and how a mountain or canyon wasn’t simply a topographical feature; how the Navajo people related to each other as clans and relations, and why; how the art and culture – pottery sand paintings, woven rugs, and more – reflected deeply held spiritual beliefs; and how the old religion was being kept alive. 

Five years after his death, Hilleman’s daughter Anne Hillerman talked to his publisher and decided to try to extend the Leaphorn and Chee stories. She had collaborated with her father on non-fiction books related to the mystery series but had never written a mystery herself. Spider Woman’s Daughter (2013) was the first of what is now four books in the continuation of the series. 

Joe Leaphorn is now retired from the police and working as a private detective, including doing some insurance work. He still meets some of his former colleagues for a weekly breakfast, and it is there the story starts. Jim Chee is elsewhere, but his wife and fellow Navajo police officer, Bernadette Manuelito, is there. Leaphorn has just taken his leave and walked to his car. Bernie is on her mobile phone talking to Chee, when she sees a hooded figure walk up to Leaphorn and hoot him in the head. She rushes outside but is too late to stop the assailant; instead, she cradles what looks to be a dying Leaphorn. The other officers rush outside to help.

Because she’s a witness and because of the strong personal connection to Leaphorn, Manuelito is put on a week’s leave by her supervisor, although everyone, including her husband, know she won’t be able to be not involved. The investigation takes Chee and Manuelito to Leaphorn’s home, to outlying residences in the area, and eventually to Santa Fe and Albuquerque. The attack at first looks like some kind of revenge by a criminal Leaphorn helped to arrest. But it soon takes on additional dimensions.

Anne Hillerman

The characters as familiar, as is the landscape. Anne Hillerman sticks closely to the “how” of her father’s novels, but she adds her own signature, particularly in that most of the story is told from the viewpoint of Manuelito. She’s also as adept as her father in portraying the clash of the Navajo and Anglo-American cultures, co-existing in the best of times as an uneasy truce.

Spider Woman’s Daughter both extends the legacy of Hillerman’s father and adds the author’s own stamp to the series. That’s not an easy to pull off, but Anne Hillerman did it. And did it well. 

Top photograph: Tségháhoodzání, the "Window Rock,” on the Navajo reservation, by Ben FrantzDale via Wikimedia.

Lisa Carter’s “Beneath a Navajo Moon”

For years I was a fan of Tony Hillerman (1925-2008), author of the Navajo Tribal Police mysteries of Lt. Joe Leaphorn and Sgt. Jim Chee. The detail, the story lines, the history – the novels were extraordinarily well done.

I confess: I started reading Lisa Carter’s Beneath a Navajo Moon (published earlier this year) wondering if it was up to the Hillerman standard. It, too, is a story involving the Navajo Tribal Police, but it falls into the Christian fiction genre, whereas Hillerman wrote for general mystery fans.

As it turns out, Carter meets that standard, which is no small thing.

Erin Dawson is a young cultural anthropologist working in Cedar Canyon, Arizona, on an internship. The town and region is part of the large Navajo reservation territory. She is the adopted child of a long line of missionaries, most of whom are serving in Peru, Papua New Guinea and places far from North America. And she is trying to find a long-lost relative of her adopted family, Olivia Thornton, who was kidnapped from a missionary post in the region in 1906, escaped captivity, and then returned, never to be heard from again. In fact, Erin isn’t even sure Olivia actually returned or died trying to.

Adam Silverthorn is a Navajo Tribal policeman, torn between his family’s Christian faith and his grandfather’s power-hungry ambitions to seize control of the territory and declare independence. He’s also a key player in a drug sting operation, feigning a love interest in the local museum curator who’s up to her eyeballs in drug trafficking. Adam has a reputation for being a playboy, his good looks attracting women in droves. Including Erin, who struggles against the attraction. And Adam finds himself attracted to this adopted daughter of missionaries.

Lisa Carter

The heart of the story is the on-again, off-again attraction between Adam and Erin, with his history and family pulling in one direction and her family (especially her mother) pulling Erin to work in missions overseas. Punctuating the relationship is the violence of radical Navajo politics and the drug scene.

Carter tells a good story, and she has infused it with meticulous research. The reader not only gets an interesting story; also offered up is a fair amount of history of Christian missions in the region (not one of Christianity’s better moments) and the cultural and spiritual struggle today.

Beneath a Navajo Moon is a compelling read. And while most of Carter’s readers are likely women (the primary audience for most Christian fiction), this is a story that should appeal to men as well.

Photograph by Ronald Carlson via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.