The first Tony Hillerman book I read was Listening Woman. To this day I can not only see the dirt road to Hosteen Tso's home, I can taste the dust in the air, see the shimmering heat, feel the gravel of the hill against which Listening Woman would place her head as she found answers for her fellow Navajo.
That was 20 years ago. It shows the power of Hillerman's craft that he was so consistently able to pack so much description, so much meaning and knowledge into what were, on the surface, simple murder mysteries. Each one of Hillerman's many mystery novels managed to be theological treatises, commentary on white American culture, an in-depth portrayal of the struggles faced by a people, and the individuals of that people, to hold their ancient beliefs while engaging the modern world, a stunning advertisement for the grandeur of New Mexico and Arizona geography - all packaged in stories light and easy enough to be beach reads.
Hillerman accomplished all of this because he didn't set out to write pretentious, overbearing tomes about weighty issues. He set out to write stories. His love for the American Southwest, Native American nations - Navajos in particular - and his keen insight into human nature are what transformed them into the literary treasure they are today. If you've never read Tony Hillerman's books, do so. They're completely worth it. One word of advice: the day you purchase or borrow your first Hillerman book, start saving for your inevitable trip to the Southwest.
Tony Hillerman died yesterday of heart failure in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Traditional Navajo belief says that when a person dies, all that is good about them goes away, leaving only their chindi, something that is similar to, but not quite, a ghost. So people would refrain from touching corpses as much as possible and from speaking the deceased's name for fear of attracting the chindi's attention. Hillerman had precious little about him that could form a chindi in the first place, and managed to defeat that belief by leaving behind such the gift of his writing. Rest in peace.
