Dispatch: Tony Hillerman is Dead

On Oct. 27 the Associated Press reported the death of Tony Hillerman. The author of more than 30 books, most of them in some way about the American Southwest, Hillerman is best known for his mystery novels set on the Navajo Reservation--and, in a few of them, the Hopi Reservation—in northeastern Arizona and New Mexico. As a writer Hillerman was adept at justifying the mysterious ways of the Navajo and Hopi to world, and in doing so he illuminated not only the cultural depth of the nation's largest Indian tribe, but also the precarious and often misunderstood connections between the Southwest's native cultures and the dominant Anglo culture. He was 83. He had lived through several different cancers and illnesses over his long life; he saw action in World War II, and he worked for years as a journalist in Oklahoma and New Mexico before finding fame in the 1980s as a mystery writer.