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Our American Desert Southwest
My home state of Arizona displays all the beauty of the desert
landscape perhaps better than any other Western U.S. state. This
is a picture taken in Organ Pipe National Park, showing a good
example of the earth's rock formations and rugged terrain. The
Northern part of Arizona is home to the Grand Canyon, Sedona and
the Red Rock Country. To the south lies the community of Tucson,
known for its year round dry and sunny climate. Located about
ten miles outside of town is San Xavier Mission,
referred to as the "White Dove of the Desert". It is still a working
Mission serving the surrounding Papago Indian Reservation. Also, Tucson
was the home of artist Ted De Grazia, who lived in a small adobe home nested
against the Santa Catalina Mountains.
He was a painter
and sculptor whose subjects were the Native Americans, especially the
children, and their surrounding desert region.
The noted American mystery author, Tony Hillerman, writes his
novels based on the American Indians, their culture and way of
life in the Desert Southwest. His series of novels are focused
around Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn and Detective Jim Chee of the Navaho
Tribal Police, who patrol the reservation in the Four Corners area
of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah.
Here is a partial listing of a few of his best fiction titles:
- Sacred Clowns
- Coyote Waits
- Talking God
- A Thief of Time
- Skinwalkers
- The Dark Wind
This is his newest novel that has just arrived in the bookstores.
I highly recommend his books if you enjoy good mystery stories
interlaced with fact and culture of our Native American Indians.
They are best enjoyed if you start with the beginning of his series
of novels, as the characters remain the same and develop and grow
throughout his novels.
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