Posted on 10/27/2008 7:22:29 AM PDT by T-Bird45
PHOENIX -- Tony Hillerman, author of the acclaimed Navajo Tribal Police mystery novels and creator of two of the unlikeliest of literary heroes — Navajo police officers Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee — died Sunday of pulmonary failure. He was 83.
Hillerman's daughter, Anne Hillerman, said her father's health had been declining in the last couple years and that he was at Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque when he died at about 3 p.m.
Hillerman lived through two heart attacks and surgeries for prostate and bladder cancer. He kept tapping at his keyboard even as his eyes began to dim, as his hearing faded, as rheumatoid arthritis turned his hands into claws.
"I'm getting old," he declared in 2002, "but I still like to write."
Anne Hillerman said Sunday that her father was a born storyteller.
"He had such a wonderful, wonderful curiosity about the world," she said. "He could take little details and bring them to life, not just in his books, but in conversation, too."
Lt. Joe Leaphorn, introduced in "The Blessing Way" in 1970, was an experienced police officer who understood, but did not share, his people's traditional belief in a rich spirit world. Officer Jim Chee, introduced in "People of Darkness" in 1978, was a younger officer studying to become a "hathaali" — Navajo for "shaman."
Together, they struggled daily to bridge the cultural divide between the dominant Anglo society and the impoverished people who call themselves the Dineh.
Hillerman's commercial breakthrough was "Skinwalkers," published in 1987 — the first time he put both characters and their divergent world views in the same book. It sold 430,000 hardcover copies, paving the way for "A Thief of Time," which made several best seller lists. In all, he wrote 18 books in the Navajo series, the most recent titled "The Shape Shifter."
Each is characterized by an unadorned writing style, intricate plotting, memorable characterization and vivid descriptions of Indian rituals and of the vast plateau of the Navajo reservation in the Four Corners region of the Southwest.
The most acclaimed of them, including "Talking God" and "The Coyote Waits," are subtle explorations of human nature and the conflict between cultural assimilation and the pull of the old ways.
"I want Americans to stop thinking of Navajos as primitive persons, to understand that they are sophisticated and complicated," Hillerman once said.
Occasionally, he was accused of exploiting his knowledge of Navajo culture for personal gain, but in 1987, the Navajo Tribal Council honored him with its Special Friend of the Dineh award. He took greater pride in that, he often said, than in the many awards bestowed by his peers, including the Golden Spur Award from Western Writers of America and the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America, which elected him its president.
Hollywood was less kind to Hillerman. Its adaptation of his 1981 novel, "Dark Wind," with Lou Diamond Phillips and Fred Ward regrettably cast as Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn, was a bomb.
Although Hillerman was best-known for the Navajo series, he wrote more than 30 books, including a novel for young people; the memoir, "Seldom Disappointed"; and books on the history and natural beauty of his beloved Southwest.
"Those places that stir me are empty and lonely," he wrote in "The Spell of New Mexico," a collection of his essays. "They invoke a sense of both space and strangeness, and all have about them a sort of fierce inhospitality."
He also edited or contributed to more than a dozen other books including crime and history anthologies and books on the craft of writing.
Born May 27, 1925, in Sacred Heart, Okla., population 50, Tony Hillerman was the son of August and Lucy Grove Hillerman. They were farmers who also ran a small store. It was there that young Tony listened spellbound to locals who gathered to tell their stories.
The teacher at Sacred Heart's one-room school house was rumored to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan, so Tony's parents sent him and his brother, Barney, to St. Mary's Academy, a school for Potawatomie Indian girls near Asher, Okla. It was at St. Mary's that he developed a lifelong respect for Indian culture — and an appreciation of what it means to be an outsider in your own land.
In 1943, he interrupted his education at the University of Oklahoma to join the Army. He lugged his mortar ashore at D-Day with the 103rd Infantry Division and was severely wounded in battle at Alsace, France. He returned from Europe a genuine war hero with a Silver Star with Oak Leaf Cluster, temporary blindness and two shattered legs that never stopped causing him pain.
He returned to the university for his degree and, in 1948, married Marie Unzer. Together, they raised six children, five of them adopted.
As a young man, he farmed, drove a truck, toiled as an oil field roughneck and worked as a reporter and editor for the Borger News-Herald in Borger, Texas; the Morning Press-Constitution in Lawton, Okla.; United Press International in Oklahoma City; and the Santa Fe New Mexican, where he rose to executive editor. He quit in 1962 to earn a master's degree from the University of New Mexico, where he later taught journalism and eventually became chairman of the journalism department. In 1993, he was inducted into the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame.
Hillerman was still teaching when he wrote his first novel, "Blessing Way." A story that always made him chuckle: His first agent advised him that if he wanted to get published, he would have to "get rid of that Indian stuff."
Hillerman is survived by his wife, Marie, and their six children. Services are pending.
I’m very sorry to hear this, although it’s not a surprise given his age and general health. He was a fine man.
A sad ping.
Iirc, five of the children were adopted.
(Local news for you, T_S.)
How sad. He was one of my favorite authors and a very interesting man.
I absolutely loved and devoured his books. PBS (she crosses herself) Mystery! actually did an excellent job of dramatizing two of his novels, with Adam Beach and Wes Studi as very believable Chee and Leaphorn. Both are wonderful actors. An aging Peter Fonda appeared in one of them. Tony Hillerman left the world a better place than he found it, and I am saddened to learn there will be no more books in the series.
So sad. Prayers for his family.
I love his books and have read many of them.
I agree - the PBS videos did a great job with the characters and the general atmosphere, although it was impossible to get the complex plots into an hour and a half.
One of my favorite writers. I am sorry to see him go.
I will miss him. I have read all of his books about Leaphorn and Chee, more than once, and felt like I knew them personally. Tony had a great gift.
Thanks for posting it. We loved TH too, and his books are wonderful. Interesting bio here, thank you so much. RIP Mr. Hillerman, and thank you.
He really captured the land we call home in his stories.
Very sad - they were great reads for cross country flights (probably why you can always find them in airports). I didn’t realize he was that old.
I’m not a mystery novel fan, but I had to read one of his books in college and found it quite entertaining and culturally enlightening.
I consider New Mexico my adopted home state. Lived there 12 years (Silver City) before family considerations prompted my move. Hillerman captured a part of the Southwest I was not able to explore and I appreciate him.
Hillerman is not only a readable writer, but a re-readable story teller. I have most of his novels in my cabinet. Think I’ll dig them out.
A great writer of mysteries. Thanks for all the great writing, Mr. Hillerman.
One memorable passage described how Jim Chee thought it was weird that with non-indians, you had to reassure them every minute or so that you were still listening to them by saing “okay”, “uh-huh”, or whatever. Apparently, this is not the custom with Navajos; they just assume that people are listening if the listener remains silent. That’s an interesting cultural difference.
He is also the only fiction writer I have ever read who mentioned one of my relatives by name in one of his books. I had a relative who was a TV weatherman in Albuquerque. He got mentioned in the novel because weather was a very important topic in New Mexico since so many people lived off the land.
>One memorable passage described how Jim Chee thought it was weird that with non-indians, you had to reassure them every minute or so that you were still listening to them by saing “okay”, “uh-huh”, or whatever. Apparently, this is not the custom with Navajos; they just assume that people are listening if the listener remains silent. That’s an interesting cultural difference.
hat is interesting. I do prefer to listen quietly, though. (Paradoxically, when I’m excited or make some interesting, possibly relevant connection, I jump in and try to engage with them. Weird, now that I think about it.)
Heard it on the radio this AM.
Have you read his books?
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