Tony Hillerman
Best-selling mystery
writer Tony Hillerman brought the
landscape of the Southwest and the Navajo culture into mainstream
America's reading. His childhood, in which he grew up with Indian
peoples, led to a
fascination with Native American cultures and prompted him to spend
time on the remote reservations of Arizona and New Mexico. His is a
world of seasons and magic, of curing ceremonies, and ancient cultures,
often on a collision course with the white world. The relationship of
the Indians with the harshly beautiful high desert country is an
underlying force in Hillerman's novels. He uses his fiction to explore
the turbulent crosscurrents that occur when ancient Native cultures,
traditional Hispanic worlds, and the dominant Anglo Society collide.
Tony Hillerman passed away in October of 2008.