Reading the Rez

     Contemporary Native Americans seem to be having a moment right now. Oscar-winning New Zealand director, screenwriter, and comedian recently co-created a television series called "Reservation Dogs" that is getting rave reviews for its stereotype-breaking comedic take on the lives of four Native American teens.  (It's a great show; catch it on Hulu.) There are a number of breakthrough novels by Native American authors that have appeared on best book lists recently, and Book Tok and #Bookstagram both offer Native American book dealers, reviewers, writers,  and readers new venues for discussing Native American literature. 

    In the past, I've already blogged about  a few authors who have written popular book series set, at least partially, near and on Indian reservations. While these authors are not Native American, their books reflect a real authenticity. Perhaps the best known series is the Leaphorn and Chee series, consisting of 25 novels so far, written by Tony Hillerman and his daughter Anne Hillerman, who took up the series when her father, Tony, died.  In the series, Joe Leaphorn, Jim Chee, and Bernadette Manuelito are members of the Navajo Nation police force; the Navajo Nation is the largest land area retained by an indigenous nation in the US, encompassing portions of Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. Each of the Leaphorn mysteries involve elements of Navajo culture and lots indigenous characters, and the detectives are usually forced to navigate in the indigenous and non-indigenous worlds in order to solve the mysteries. I've read all of the Leaphorn and Chee series, and I recommend them for both the mystery reader and for those who are looking to learn more about Navajo culture.

    Another series which I've enjoyed and recommend is the Sheriff Walt Longmire series, by Craig Johnson, the source of the tv series "Longmire."  Longmire is a sheriff in rural Wyoming in fictional Absaroka County, named after the real Absaroka (Also know as Apsaalooke or Crow) tribe and mountains. To date, there are 17 Longmire novels, and the sheriff often finds himself dealing with Native American characters and reservation affairs, but the reservation is the Cheyenne reservation, not the Absaroka, for whom the county is named. There are several recurring Native American characters throughout the series, but the sheriff's best friend and oft-times partner is Henry Standing Bear, who ahs been Sheriff Longmire's boon companion since high school football days and through their service in the Vietnam War. (By the way, I love the audiobook versions of the Longmire books because of the great narrator, George Guidall, but I have to admit that I'm not a huge fan of the tv adaptation.)

    In the past few months, however, I have read the chance to read three very good books by Native American authors and reflective of contemporary reservation life. The first was Midnight Son by James Dommek Jr, Josephine Holtzman, and Isaac Kestenbaum. It is an Audible original and very much feels like a podcast, and it also stands out from the others because it is the true story of an Alaskan native man named Teddy Kyle Smith who was starting to get noticed as an actor in small independent films when he apparently went on a crime spree in the Alaskan wilderness. The story follows Dommek on his quest to find out about the real Smith and to try to understand what happened. It was a very interesting story, well told/narrated by Dommek himself, and it delves into Native Alaskan culture and folklore.

    Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden, a member of the Lakota nation, and Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley, a member of the Ojibwe Nation, have a lot in common. They've both gotten great reviews and a lot of attention. Firekeeper's Daughter is set to become a Netflix series. They are both first novels for their authors. They both deal with major blights on Native American reservations: drugs, crime, hopelessness, despair, and exploitation. They also portray a broken reservation system, and the willful neglect of the Federal government and the Federal government's unwillingness to prosecute crime on reservations. And even though the Lakota and Ojibwe reservations are miles apart and homes to different nations, it was interesting to see similarities in slang words used on the reservations and other cultural elements.

    Firekeeper's Daughter is actually a Young Adult novel, and it seems like the author threw in every popular element of young adult fiction: sex, drugs, alcohol, violence, sports, a strong determined teen girl who just doesn't fit in, teenage angst, clueless (or evil) adults, etc. Eighteen-year old Daunis Fontaine finds herself involved in a federal drug investigation on the Ojibwe reservation, and she becomes an undercover informant for the FBI, a decision which finds her dragged into a very dangerous operation.

    Winter Counts  is also about a teen ager, a boy this time, who finds himself in the center of a dangerous undercover federal investigation of a drug ring that has introduced heroin onto the Rosebud Lakota reservation, but he is not the main character. The main character is the boy's uncle, Virgil Wounded Horse. Wounded Horse is the local enforcer on the reservation. Because the enforcement of laws on reservations is, to put it mildly, haphazard or non existent, people hire Wounded Horse to exact revenge on people who have wronged them.  This is apparently a real thing on reservations. Wounded Horse is dragged into the drug investigation when his nephew overdoses on heroin. Winter Counts is an interesting look into reservation life, and it feels like the author plans a Wounded Horse series of books.

A Continuing Series.... Or Several....

  

There’s something comfortable about the familiar. Everybody has that favorite television series, movie series, or book series to which they like to return. You know and like the characters, and you’re familiar with the creator’s storytelling style. It may even be like having a conversation with an old friend. Over the last year, I’ve read a few books in series that I’ve enjoyed.

What if Abraham Lincoln and his longtime friend Joshua Speed solved mysteries in their days as young law partners in Illinois?  Jonathan Putnam, a nationally renowned lawyer and a Lincoln scholar,  writes books that imagine exactly that.  A House Divided is the fourth in the series. Inspired by actual events and lots of historical research, House Divided has Lincoln and Speed attempting to save their client from being convicted of murder and finding themselves mixed up in a great financial mystery.  In the process, they find their friendship shaken by the appearance of a headstrong and forward-thinking young woman named Mary Todd.  A House Divided  is just as entertaining and interesting as the previous three entries in the series.

The Council of Twelve is the seventh book in a fictional series written by Oliver Potzsch. Potzsch wrote the first in the series, The Hangman’s Daughter, after he discovered that his family history included a long line of city executioners.  That discovery led him into deep research of the lives of medieval and Renaissance-era executioners, and he found that the job was often hereditary, and, while the job of torturing and executing prisoners was considered essential, the executioners and their families lived in a very unique social position. On one hand, they were seen as unclean and unfit to live amongst the population, but, on the other hand, they were often sought out for their knowledge of healing and medicine.  In The Council of Twelve, the hangman Jakob and his family travel to Munich for a meeting of the hangmen’s guild.  In Munich, the family discovers that a number of young women have died under mysterious circumstances, and they set out to discover why. As in the previous six books, the mystery is intriguing, the story is entertaining, and it’s fun to see the family member grow and develop.  For history lovers, there is also so much great historical detail about the time and place that you can almost picture the streets.

When Tony Hillerman died in 2008, many of his fans were afraid they had read the last of Navajo policemen Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. Hillerman had written 18 contemporary mystery novels starring Leaphorn and Chee that were full of the history, the legends, and the flavor of the Southwest and of Navajo and Pueblo culture.  No need to worry though; Hillerman’s daughter, Anne Hillerman, picked up the pen and continued where her father left off. So far, she has written three Leaphorn and Chee novels, and they stand up to her father’s work.