Wind Spirit: An Ella Clah Novel

great book with a story that keep you on your toes and will finish before you put it down

I am definitely a fan of Aimee Thurlo and Davide Thurlo's Ella Clah mysteries. Yes, they have supplanted Tony Hillerman for me. At last, an intelligent female Indian officer who is embroiled in this book with the closing of the uranium mines in New Mexico. For those who have the eyes to comprehend, she deftly brings in the illnesses the Indians experience because of the mining. Few people are aware of how the mining on Indian reservations contributes to their health, but also their poverty. This book brings out the subtle effects of a near-death experience, the superstition and fanaticism of people who cannot understand that there is something beyong death. The authors weave a realistic tale of conflict between the traditionalists and the modernists that is intense and holds the reader's attention. Bettye Johnson, award-winning author of Secrets of the Magdalene Scrolls.

Aimee and David Thurlo have added a ninth installment to their Ella Clah series. These novels take place on a Four Corners, New Mexico reservation where Clah is a special investigator for the Navajo Tribal Police. Her family is "traditionalist" and her brother Clifford is a respected hataalli, or medicine man, who at the start of the book is singing hatals. "These songs of blessing compelled the Navajo gods to bring good luck to the land the yellow dust had corrupted and give it new life. Navajo prayers were not petitions. If recited just right, it was believed that the gods couldn't fail to comply."The rituals are part of a ceremony to kick off the demolition of warrens of abandoned uranium mines that are a danger to the population. Their demise fills the hopes of the tribe, which are vested in "NEED, which stood for Navajo Electrical Energy Development ? the Navajo Nation's first step toward a more prosperous future." The abject poverty on the Rez is palpable and the "lack of funds still took a heavy toll on the tribe's ability to provide and maintain emergency services. Police equipment was badly outdated and salaries hadn't been improved in years. Even the hospital was understaffed."Ella follows her nephew and his friend when they wander away from the crowd. She sensed the danger they were in as they played "somewhere behind a cluster of boulders several yards away." After a quiet "lecture" about learning patience and warning them about the sick land, her nephew falls off a plank and was pulled into an ever-widening hole. "He dangled helplessly over the edge, staring at her with terrified eyes. 'I'm going to fall!' " Finally, she manages to lift him up to safely. As she tried to save herself, "a wall of sand came sliding down and before she could cry out, Ella felt herself plummeting down a narrow tunnel." When she is found and rescued everyone thinks she is dead. The EMTs are no longer working on her and have covered her with a sheet. At first even her brother considered her to be dead. But after an out-of-body experience, "Ella pushes [the sheet] aside and sits up. No need for CPR ? it worked." Ella is back. But for a Navajo just "coming back" is not that easy.Various and sundry legends, stories, myths and rituals comprise the traditional and modern Navajo belief systems. Some of these are contradictory and put Clah in the strange position of having to prove she has not been "touched" or "contaminated" or "taken over" by evil spirits. She had an experience the year before that convinced her that "she'd discovered ? skinwalkers --- Navajo witches known for their practices and rituals associated with the dead --- [who] were using [the] old mines for their own purposes." But on this happy day she was convinced that "skinwalkers had apparently stopped using this site after authorities had destroyed a few of the larger shafts."Clifford says, "Her wind spirit has drifted. We, as Navajos, are taught that life begins when wind enters the body at bi

During the closing of the uranium mines at Four Corners in the Navaho Reservation in New Mexico, a child almost falls through an abandoned mine shaft. Navaho Police Special Investigator Elle Clah rescues him but falls in the hole and the ground offers no hard holds to pull herself out. She manages to attract someone?s attention but before she can be rescued, she is drowning in a sea of sand. When she is taken out, they pronounce her dead and put a sheet over her, but she suddenly jumps up very much alive. She had a near death experience and everything she believes about the afterlife is challenged.The shaft she fell in was once used by Skinwalkers and because of that the fact that she was declared dead, the traditionalist and the new traditionalists want her to have a special sing to remove the taint of death that clings to her. Only one man alive knows it and nobody knows where he is. A crime wave of arson, murder and numerous attempts on Ella?s life breaks out and Ella is hampered in her investigation because many Navaho won?t deal with her until she has the sing.Aimee and David Thurlo always writes a great Native American police procedural but this work is one of the best because after almost being killed Ella realizes she has to make some changes in her life. WIND SPIRIT is as much a mystery as it is an anthropological story of the Navaho lifestyle. It is fascinating to see how many different cultural groups live on the reservation. The authors educate as well as entertain the readers by incorporating social issues that must be addressed into the plot.Harriet Klausner