The Blessing Way

I would suggest anything by Hillerman, but you might as well start with the first in the series. Without overtly advocating for activism to protect nature, Hillerman renders the desert southwest in such achingly beautiful detail that one can’t help but want to fight to protect it. In fact, Hillerman is where I got my start in reading/writing environmental thrillers.

When we first discovered Tony Hillerman’s books, we nearly lost a whole summer’s fieldwork because we couldn’t stop reading them. In our opinion, no fiction author has better captured both the haunting physical beauty and cultural traditions of the Navajo Nation. Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn of the tribal police is more pragmatic than his fellow officers Jim Chee and Bernadette Manuelito, who bring a more spiritual side to their work. The Blessing Way is the first of this long-running series, which is being carried on by Anne Hillerman. In this first book, the police find a corpse so far out in… show more.

The Blessing Way gives us Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn a long-serving member of the Navajo Tribal Police force. He’s had an early childhood education at boarding school, but he goes on to get a master’s in anthropology at the University of New Mexico, so he has an expanded point of view of both Navajo and white cultures which gives him a broad and educated perspective. By nature he is calm, unhurried and methodical, and courteous in his approach, even with people he knows are guilty. He is married to Emma, and she is the emotional center of his world.

Who of us hasn’t heard of Tony Hillerman’s experience with an agent’s reply of “get rid of all that Indian stuff?” Advice that Hillerman rightly ignored. He went on to write some of the best, and most successful, mysteries located in the Southwest. Even better, his stories included skinwalkers, ghosts, and witchcraft drawn from Navajo rituals and beliefs. In The Blessing Way (A Leaphorn & Chee Novel) spirituality added richness to his storytelling as he introduces his characters, the Navajo, and their culture. His deep love of the region came through with every word. In my stories, I’ve done the… show more.