THE WAY OF THE BEAR

By Wolf Schneider

When Navajo Tribal Police officers Jim Chee and Bernadette Manuelito drive out to the edge of the Navajo Nation in southeastern Utah, he’s there for a sweat lodge ceremony and meeting with a philanthropist, while she’s there for the mini vacation and to consider her future, having been passed over for a detective position. In this remote region held sacred by many, they’re both looking forward to the solace of spacious vistas with buttes, cliffs, and red sandstone. What they don’t expect? For Bernie to be hunted down and shot at by men in a pickup truck when she’s just out hiking among petroglyphs in the Valley of the Gods. What’s more, the next morning a paleontologist outdoorsman who was staying at their same motel in Bluff is found dead on a deserted country road.

So begins The Way of the Bear by Santa Fe novelist Anne Hillerman, who has become a New York Times bestselling author by continuing the Navajoland mystery series revolving around characters created by her dad, Tony Hillerman. She knows the territory and the culture. Like how when Bernie is out there alone among the red stone monoliths and an owl glides by, Bernie says a prayer of protection since owls are considered omens of death. It causes Bernie to reflect how, “For her and Chee, her husband, the days had been filled with strong winds of change, a tornado of turmoil on the job and off. She had come to this special place, the Valley of the Gods, in the shadow of the sacred Bears Ears Buttes, in search of a few hours of winter peace.”

Encountering Unexpected Danger Near The Four Corners Area Book Review

In short order, witchcraft, petroglyph defacement, potsherds, rough mesa country, intermittent cell service, a second death, and a blizzard unnerve Bernie and Chee, as their respite turns into a danger zone.

Author Anne Hillerman