The Tale Teller (Leaphorn & Chee, #23)

by Anne Hillerman

The jeweler had it right, Leaphorn thought; the photograph did not do them justice. The earrings were beautiful, gracefully crafted bear-paw designs, well balanced to dangle from the ear delicately, calling attention to the face and the curve of the neck.

"calling attention to the face and the curve of the neck" doesn't sound like a thought Joe Leaphorn would have.

“How are you doing on Navajo?” “It’s hard. But there are websites and those two movies, you know about them?” “I do. Star Wars and the one about the fish. What was that called?” For the first time, the boy responded in Navajo. “Nemo Hádéést’į́į́. Finding Nemo. But I liked Star Wars better.”

Acknowledgments The Tale Teller drew its inspiration in part from a real-life tragedy. The Long Walk took the Navajo under armed guard from their sacred homeland to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, to a concentration camp known as Bosque Redondo. Hwéeldi, as the Navajos call it, left its impact on every Navajo family, including those who escaped the soldiers seeking to capture them. The year 2018 marked the 150th anniversary of the signing of the treaty that established what is now the Navajo Nation and enabled the ragged, starving Navajo families to return to their land between the four sacred mountains. The Southwest’s version of the Trail of Tears lives in infamy, and the story deserves to be recognized as a true and shameful part of United States history. I extend special thanks to Thelma Domenici, Mary Ann Cortese, and the hardworking Friends of Bosque Redondo—the site of the imprisonment—for inviting me to revisit the monument which respectfully commemorates this sad event. I was humbled and honored to speak to your group.

Although I could find no records to support my idea that another dress woven by Juanita still exists, part of the joy of writing novels is the freedom an author has to elaborate on the known universe. And as we know, the world is rich in the unexpected.

Speech therapist Jeanne Jebb-Tracey passed along information about the challenges people face as they recover from a brain injury and learn to speak again.

A shout out to my agent, Elizabeth Trupin-Pulli, and my editor, Carolyn Marino, for not flinching when I told them it was time to bring Lt. Joe Leaphorn back as a crime solver, and for their wise assistance in making him true to the character Tony Hillerman created thirty-some years ago. Thanks to copy editor Mary Beth Constant for her skilled work and to Rachel Elinsky, Hannah Robinson, and Tom Hoppe at HarperCollins for their assistance in bringing The Tale Teller into print.