{"id":4008,"date":"2021-04-11T12:37:13","date_gmt":"2021-04-11T19:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=4008"},"modified":"2021-04-11T12:37:13","modified_gmt":"2021-04-11T19:37:13","slug":"anne-hillerman-stargazer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/anne-hillerman-stargazer\/","title":{"rendered":"Anne Hillerman: Stargazer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This seems almost unbelievable, but it\u2019s been 51 years since Tony Hillerman published his first Joe Leaphorn novel, The Blessing Way.<\/em>\u00a0 The books are now such revered classics I was hesitant when I picked up Anne Hillerman\u2019s first book, thinking there was no way she could continue the work of her father.\u00a0 But Ms. Hillerman has made the series her own.\u00a0 The central character is neither Joe Leaphorn or Jim Chee, but Bernadette (Bernie) Manuelito, giving the series an entirely new flavor.<\/p>\n

Bernie and Chee are married and Leaphorn was literally dumb in the first book, recovering from a head wound.\u00a0 He has his words back, but they are halting, and complex communication is done through the written word.\u00a0 That makes him, as he should be, more or less the series oracle.\u00a0 In this novel, Chee has temporarily become Bernie\u2019s boss, which makes them cranky with one another.\u00a0 However, these books really belong to Bernie.<\/p>\n

The case Bernie catches seems like a simple one.\u00a0 A man is found shot in his car, an apparent suicide, but one of Bernie\u2019s high school friends quickly confesses to the crime, offering no details of any kind.\u00a0 This simply doesn\u2019t sit right with Bernie, who knows the woman as someone she had supposed would never kill another person.\u00a0 She\u2019s a single mom raising her son with the help of her brother, and the dead man in the car is her husband (not quite her ex) as well as her son\u2019s father.<\/p>\n

Bernie\u2019s investigation takes her a bit far afield.\u00a0 The dead man had been an astronomer, working at the VLA, or Very Large Array, a radio astronomy laboratory.\u00a0 From Hillerman\u2019s afterword, the VLA studies \u201ccelestial objects that give off radio waves.\u201d\u00a0 The dead scientist had been studying black holes and the possibility of other life forms in the universe.\u00a0 While some of the science is complex (and the afterword offers a friendly explanation) Hillerman drills down to what I think she\u2019s truly interested in: the beauty of the New Mexico sky.\u00a0 The VLA is located in a remote location to avoid light pollution.<\/p>\n

These books, like her father\u2019s before her, are a nice mix of Navajo culture and an explication of family life and relationships ranging from Bernie and Chee\u2019s marriage, to Leaphorn\u2019s relationship with his partner, to Bernie\u2019s complicated relationship with her aging mother and a sister who has recently turned her life around.\u00a0 This aspect of the books adds a rich background for the characters and for the reader.\u00a0 In this novel, the family dynamics of the confessed murderer also come into play.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a secondary case as well.\u00a0 When Bernie goes out to serve a warrant she runs into some errant cattle, and in trying to track down the owners, she discovers a woman tied up and beaten, along with a dead baby.\u00a0 This case haunts her trough the novel and pushes her toward a different career path.<\/p>\n

The central case, though, is the murder of the man in the car, a case that seems so simple and obvious everyone keeps telling Bernie to drop it.\u00a0 When Leaphorn gives her a good nugget of advice, it helps Bernie crack the case.\u00a0 While I appreciated the setting and beauty involved in the denouement, I was annoyed that Bernie had gotten herself into a classic woman in peril situation. However, it did provide a twist I hadn\u2019t seen coming \u2013 I thought I had figured the ending out.<\/p>\n

This is a solid, enjoyable series, taking the flavor of Tony Hillerman\u2019s classic novels and centering them firmly in the 21st<\/sup> century.\u00a0 I love the character of Bernie Manuelito and look forward to sharing many more adventures with her.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This seems almost unbelievable, but it\u2019s been 51 years since Tony Hillerman published his first Joe Leaphorn novel, The Blessing Way.\u00a0 The books are now such revered classics I was hesitant when I picked up Anne Hillerman\u2019s first book, thinking there was no way she could continue the work of her father.\u00a0 But Ms. Hillerman … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[547,550,551,553,552,546,65,549,548],"class_list":["post-4008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-uncategorized","tag-anne-hillerman","tag-astronomy","tag-bernie-manuelito","tag-jim-chee","tag-joe-leaphorn","tag-navajo","tag-new-mexico","tag-stargazer","tag-tony-hillerman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4008"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4011,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4008\/revisions\/4011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}