Quite a few locals are die-hard fans of the late Tony Hillerman's mysteries set on the Navajo Reservation and featuring Navajo Police officers Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee.
There was fear that the series died with him. But daughter Anne Hillerman revived it in 2013 with the release of Spider Woman's Daughter. Then came Rock with Wings. Her third book in the revival, Song of the Lion, is scheduled for release in April. She's now working on a fourth book.
Hillerman spoke to and met with local fans of the series Tuesday evening at the Pine River Library. She talked about how important libraries have been in her life and how she came to revive her father's book series.
"I don't think I would have become a writer without libraries," she said. "They were so important to my parents." Presumably referring to the Tuesday event, she added, "Without libraries I wouldn't have had a chance to practice public speaking."
When she was little, her dad got a newspaper job in Santa Fe, and the family moved there from Oklahoma. "Part of the reason I became a writer was my dad's real passion for writing. He loved his job and the people he worked with." She recounted how he would work all day at the newspaper, come home and be a dad to her and five adopted siblings, then stay up far into the night working on his own books.
"My dad was supporting our family with non-fiction. His first (Chee/Leaphorn) book, The Blessing Way, he gave it to his agent, and she said it's bad, it falls between the (genre) cracks. Just stick with non-fiction." Hillerman pressed the agent on what she didn't like about Blessing Way. "She said to make it more salable, take out all the Indian stuff."
Anne Hillerman wrote her own assortment of non-fiction books before reviving the Leaphorn/Chee series. One was Tony Hillerman's Landscape - on the Road with Chee and Leaphorn. She worked on that with her photographer husband, Don Strel. At her dad's urging, they traveled the reservation as he had done in the early 1980s. "We had finished the book when my dad died," Hillerman said.
"The publisher sent us on a book tour. There were always (audience) questions, are there going to be any more (Leaphorn/ Chee) books? Isn't there something almost finished? I must have heard that 100 times. It wasn't just to make me feel good. They really felt the loss. I missed those characters too."
In his later books, her dad introduced a new young female Navajo Police officer, Bernadette Manuelito. Hillerman said she liked Bernie but wanted her to act like a full-fledged cop, instead of always being rescued by Jim Chee. They were married at the end of her dad's last book, Shapeshifter.
Hillerman continued, "After I got over the worst of missing my dad, I thought maybe I could continue the series. I wanted it to stand on its own merits besides being a continuation of the series." She also wanted Bernie to become the main character. She talked to her mom about it, started working on the book for a couple months, "and it was shaping up to be something that people other than my mom and me would want to read." She added some new characters - Bernie's mother, a celebrated but now elderly weaver of Navajo rugs, and Bernie's troubled sister Darleen.
"Dad wasn't so keen on writing about relationships," Hillerman said. "It was more action." She developed the relationship between Jim Chee and Bernie, even having them kiss. She suggested it might be the first kiss ever in a Hillerman book.
She noted there are guidelines for books in the mystery genre. Start with a serious crime like murder, provide a progression of leads and false leads and possible suspects, and solve it at the end.
"One of the hardest things for a writer is to figure out where to start" a book. "I had a feeling more people would be reading my book (than if her name weren't known), and these were people my dad trained for years to appreciate good writing. So it would be a tough audience." At the library, she read the opening to Spider Woman's Daughter, where Bernie witnesses an assailant shoot Joe Leaphorn in the head. His survival remains in doubt through the book.
Hillerman said she started the second book with Bernie and Chee working together. It wasn't working. She re-structured it to give Bernie her own crime to solve while Chee became embroiled in another (possibly related or not) mystery in Monument Valley. Rock with Wings is a translation of the Navajo name for Shiprock, the volcanic spire west of the town of Shiprock.
Hillerman said people were suggesting book names that were bad or worse until her mom, who was in the hospital then, provided Rock with Wings as an obvious choice.
Hillerman's appearance was part of the library's Amazing Author Series. The Cortez and Telluride libraries also participate.
Pine River Library Director Shelley Walchak said this is the second year for the series. She called Hillerman's appearance "one of the biggest coups we could have come across." Other authors in the series will be Brendon Leonard on March 14 and water law expert and retired Colorado Supreme Court Justice Greg Hobbs on May 16.
