THE BLESSING WAY was Tony Hillerman's first novel. Although Navajo police officer Joe Leaphorn appears in the book, he is a secondary character. The main character is Bergen McKee, a tenured professor with expertise in the social context of Navajo witchcraft. McKee is still recovering from his divorce five years ago and has returned to the Reservation to continue his research in hopes of revitalizing some of the ambition of his youth. He contacts Leaphorn, an old friend from college, to collect current leads about purported witchcraft incidents. One in particular stands out. A wolf-witch was rumored to be in the Lukachukais canyon country where a fugitive Leaphorn is seeking is hiding out. The fugitive, Luis Horseman, appears in the first chapter and his puzzling observations add credibility to the idea of a witch wolf in the reader's mind. The rumor begins to resonate when there are reports of some strange encampments, and viciously slaughtered sheep. Patience is the key to penetrating the secretive world of the Navajo. McKee questions Old Woman Gray Rocks and is pleased to find his command of the Navajo language is steadily returning. At first she is reluctant to talk. Then she relates in a roundabout way the comings and goings of various Navajo and outsiders. Much of this has little to do with McKee's inquiry but he lets the old woman tell her story in her own way as dictated by etiquette. He also surmises that her reticence is partly to do with some of her own kinship ties. She does not want any of her relatives connected with talk about witchcraft. Leaphorn is also a skillful interrogator. He observes the two-day Enemy Way ceremony performed to safeguard Charlie Tsosie and turn the witchcraft back on the witch. The ceremony is rarely performed, quite elaborate, and expensive. It requires more than one singer, and includes special performers, feasting and gifts. Leaphorn concludes that there is something concrete behind the wolf-witch rumors for the family to pay for this ceremony. The ceremony also proves that the witch must be an outsider; if it were another Navajo, a different ceremony would be performed. Leaphorn carefully couches his skepticism in tactful statements which reveal his knowledge of the symbolism and mythic connotations of the ceremony. After this point, Hillerman focuses on McKee's narrative. The plot follows the pattern of a thriller rather than a mystery. Hillerman's use of Navajo belief is tantalizing. He never stumbles into a didactic voice. He alludes to a myth about Changing Woman and her hero sons, Monster Slayer and Water Child without much additional explanation. It is simply a fact of the Navajo cosmos. He describes the meticulous strictures of sand painting which have been handed down from generation to generation. A prevailing theme is the tenuous hold of tradition. The healer in the Enemy Way ceremony, Sandoval, laments the lost traditionalism which has taken place during his lifetime. “The People are losing too many of the old ways, Sandoval thought, and he thought it again when he had to tell Tsosie how to sit on the feet of Big Fly, and even had to remind him to face the east. When Sandoval was a boy learning the ways from his father, his father had not had to tell people how to sit. They knew.” (p.66) This knowledge is quite separate from the kind of book knowledge possessed by McKee, and even Leaphorn, who seems to Sandoval to recite his knowledge as if by rote. Such knowledge is not living knowledge that will guide all thought and emotion. This book was published in 1970. Hillerman's portrayal of Navajo belief will become richer and his writing more confident in succeeding books. At the time, his choice of a Navajo police officer was an innovative experiment. He continued to refine his portrayal of Navajo characters as he proceeded with the series.NOTES:Tony Hillerman died in 2008. I was happy to learn that his daughter Anne Hillerman is continuing the series with SPIDER WOMAN'S DAUGHTER and ROCK WITH WINGS.
This is the first book in Tony Hillerman’s Navaho mysteries, and the first of three with Joe Leaphorn. I’ve already reviewed Listening Woman and Dance Hall of the Dead. What I appreciated was I didn’t find that the books had to be read in order. And I’m almost glad I read them out of order since the first book featuring Lt. Joe Leaphorn was definitely not the strongest of the three. I also “read” this on audio book.Premise of the book revolves around a body found out in the canyon country on the reservation. First thought it was a drunk who had the misfortune to keel over dead, but upon closer inspection, was purposely placed in such a way to hide a murder. The question becomes why and immediately Navaho witch-craft comes to mind. Lt. Joe Leaphorn makes his way to an Enemy Blessing to ask questions. Meanwhile, Professor McKee and Professor Crawford are heading out into the Mesa. McKee is an Ethnologist and is looking for witch-craft stories to back his studies. Crawford has his own studies to pursue. The story then departs from Lt. Leaphorn’s almost clinical assessment of the Navaho Enemy Blessing ceremony being performed to Prof. McKee running for his life with a young graduate student in tow. This part came across as cliché’d. The young female grad student unbelieving about the danger they were in, petulant, and weak. The antagonists trying to cover up some great secret deed and killing people who are out in the same area as them. McKee, behaving more like McGyver, somehow thwarts the antagonists long enough for Lt. Leaphorn to reason his way through the problem and meet him at the end.I did have a few issues with this first book, but I also needed to remind myself that crime technology and medical accuracy in mystery books – while sometimes still wildly off base – has improved in the subsequent years since 1970. For example, the young woman is basically shot in the face. Our hero puts a bandage on it, puts her in a cave for safe keeping with some food. She is rescued because she makes a smoke fire. Uh huh. Next issue was we never really see how our good Lt. Leaphorn solves the mystery. First he’s asking questions at a ceremony, then he’s riding around the high mesas, then he’s looking at tire tracts and then we don’t see Lt. Leaphorn until the end when he’s putting the bow on the package so to speak. My final issue was the whole Navaho Witch-craft culture presented in the book. It seemed to just revolve around ‘witch-craft is scary business, don’t mess with it’, but that was about it. A bit disappointing. I’ll keep reading the series though, until I either run out of audio books or I get tired of Hillerman.
Do You like book The Blessing Way (1990)?
I read a slew of Tony Hillerman's books back in the day and liked them. When I was reading Cold Dish (which I quit halfway through, skipped to the end to see the killer ... nailed it, btw) I felt like Cold Dish was kind of sappy and sentimental. Then I realized that the feeling I wanted (western culture, unsentimental, good mystery) was there all along! Or that is my guess. Early in rereading this book and have realized that I really don't remember anything about it at all but am loving it. Read by George Guidall who does the voices really well. Not too Navaho-ish but just enough to see it mentally.UPDATE"Holy moly. I expected the interesting look at the Navaho life and the mystery. But I didn't expect this to turn into a survival, beat-the-bad-guys books from a hapless buystander's point of view. This is simply riveting and I am really wondering at the final solution to the mystery ... which I think I have the pieces to, but can't put together properlyFINALSo enjoyable on several levels. Have requested the next book from the library ...
—Julie Davis
Someone is acting as a Navajo witch. A young man who is running from the law is killed in a strange way and dragged out to be found.Bergen McKee, a divorced professor of Native American studies is back home trying to get more data on Navajo witches.Ellen Leon is seaching for her fiancee to talk to him about something important.Detective Joe Leaphorn must figure out how all these things fit together and find the killer of the young man.This story is mostly about Bergen McKee and hnis search to finhd himself. Throw in some good detective work and a lot about the mystcism of the Navajo people in conjunction with witches and you get a very good story.
—Frank Taranto
I recently revisited the Blessing Way, Tony Hillerman's first novel set in the Navajo Nation. Despite its shortcomings, not least of which is a preposterous plot, it's still a fun read, but definitely flawed. I first read this novel on a trip to the Southwest in the 1980s when I was a kid, and found it captivating. I went on to read the entire series, and to reread many of my favorites, but this one has been sitting on the shelf unread for decades. I found the descriptions of the land and people are still as vivid as they were on that first reading, but the plot is uncharacteristically weak, and the main character's actions and internal dialogue are frequently feebleminded, and he comes up with elaborate TV survival show solutions that would be fatal in a more realistic setting. This sorry excuse for a hero is rescued in the end by Lt. Joe Leaphorn, Hillerman's best creation, who would go on to have a long and legendary career in later books, but appears here only as a supporting character. Despite its shortcomings, it's still an entertaining adventure, and I can forgive it a lot for the austere beauty of the setting,
—Telyn
