Nightland

Louis Owens has crafted an engrossing story that mixes a not unfamiliar crime thriller with the supernatural world of two half-Cherokee friends, Billy Keene and Will Striker, and Billy's elderly grandfather. When Billy and Will watch a body and suitcase full of cash fall from the sky while out hunting, their entire world changes immediately. After a brief debate, they decide to leave the body where it impaled itself on a pine tree and take off with the $850,000 dollars in cash; but, before they even get out of the forest, they are attacked by a helicopter. Yes, the beginning seems familiar and the storyline done before; but, the direction this book takes departs from your standard boilerplate crime thriller. Between romance with beautiful strangers and the grandfather involving the spirit world in protecting Billy and Will, this book is a fun romp from beginning to end. And, don't expect a pat ending, as the climax of this story has a twisting and turning path to the last word. >>>>>>><<<<<<< <br /> <br />A Guide to my Book Rating System: <br /> <br />1 star = The wood pulp would have been better utilized as toilet paper. <br />2 stars = Don't bother, clean your bathroom instead. <br />3 stars = Wasn't a waste of time, but it was time wasted. <br />4 stars = Good book, but not life altering. <br />5 stars = This book changed my world in at least some small way.

Billy Keene and Will Striker, the main characters of Louis Owens' novel Nightland, are half-breed Cherokees living on failing ranches in New Mexico that their grandparents bought from the Mexican-Americans whose family had a grant from Spain [who took the land from Native Americans in the first place]. They're out hunting deer when a man [who we find out is of Pueblo Indian blood] falls from the sky and ends up skewered on a juniper tree. A suitcase full of money falls with him. Despite misgivings, Billy and Will keep the money. Then all hell breaks loose. Nightland is at heart a thriller, but as with Owens' other novels, it is also a musing on identity. Native American spirituality and the supernatural play a key role in the novel, so if suspension of disbelief is a problem for the potential reader, don't start this book. This is a much faster read than Bone Game and The Sharpest Sight. I found Nightland to be one of the highlights of my summer reading. Oh, and as if my opinion actually counted, I think Richard Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino should buy the rights to Nightland and make a movie. One of the pieces of sad news from this summer was that Louis Owens had taken his own life. He left us five great novels, including Nightland.

A body falls from the sky in the dry New Mexico wilds. Two native American ranchers sight the mysterious image and set off to find it. Nearby to the body impaled in the limbs of a tree, they find a suitcase full of money.This could be their lucky break, or their worst nightmare. They decide to risk keeping the money -- and to face the inevitable consequences . . .The native American insights are a delight to read. Louis Owens's beautifully crafted prose leaves a last impression.

from the very first paragraph. Owens's brand of wit and humor blend with his examination of the ranching life in the New Mexico desert to create a highly-charged, complex murder mystery. Set in Indian country, Nightland stakes a strong multicultural claim to the art form of the American Murder Mystery, but it stakes a claim also on the magical realism of American Indian and South American literature. The resulting blend of ghosts and grim realism give the story a dark, mystical, enspirited patina. The pig and dog are hilarious counterpoint to the Cherokee mixedblood heroes. Round out the story with amiable ghosts, a seductive shape-shifter, and some nasty bad guys and you have a bona fide page-turner.

as his mixed-blood Cherokee protagonists encounter the results of a drug-money drop gone bad; the drug dealer, pushed from his plane, soars like a vulture and is impaled on a New Mexican cedar snag while his $850,000 in cash drops at the feet of the two deer-hunting ranchers.Always one who loves to create the subtle blend of myth and modern, Owens has carefully crafted a retelling of the Cherokee legend of the thunder twins born to Kana'ti and Selu, the first man and woman. Close friends Will Striker and Billy Keene have enough trouble already,with a drought parching their land and their women discontent to live with them. Choosing to regard the cash as a gift from the great spirit, the two inadvertently unleash a torrent of evil activity that all seems to arrive from the west, the Nightland of Cherokee legend. Add an ancient grandfather who is literally fading fast, a genial ghost, an insatiable shape-shifter, and sundry drug dealers with varied agendas and Owens has a mystery that moves along at a clip that will satisfy, among others, the readers of Tony Hillerman's Indian Country mysteries. Humor and irony are the hallmark of all of Owens' novels, as are the thoughtful, non-stereotypical Native American characters he places on the stage. All of his sound and fury signifies something: a shift away from Indians as symbols of the past, of drunken victims of Spanish and Anglo invaders. Cultures meet and merge in this marginal world where the stage is lit by heat lightning and the orchestra pit contains thunder, singing coyotes and exploding bullets.