DAUGHTER OF THE MORNING STAR by Craig Johnson
The latest episode in the career of Walt Longmire, Sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming, has the key elements we’ve come to expect: action in an unforgiving but beautiful landscape and mysticism centered on Native American legends and artifacts. Add banter between Longmire and sidekick Henry Standing Bear
that riffs on the Spenser-Hawk relationship, and you have another winner.
But this Longmire travels deep into life on tribal reservations in the American West, where violence against women far exceeds national averages.
Longmire and Henry head to Montana when asked to informally investigate death threats targeting the reservation’s star female high school basketball player. Jaya Long doesn’t make helping her easy; she’s sullen and independent and the product of a spectacularly broken home: mom in prison, two siblings dead, and a disappeared sister. Dad runs with a
neo-Nazi group. Jaya’s salvation is her grandparents and the female tribal police chief.
When Longmire finds out that the disappeared sister was getting similar threats, the investigation turns on what happened a year ago when she was lost in a snowstorm. As he probes, a strange phenomenon repeatedly surfaces in the form of curdling tales, a strange book, and a postcard from a place that does not exist.
According to legend, the Wandering Without is a collective of lost souls that feeds on evil and captures the living who encroach on its territory. Longmire is not immune.
In a spine-freezing segment, Longmire is trapped in a canyon at night by an invisible spiritual force. When he stumbles out, thinking he’s been gone a few hours, more than a day and a half have passed. The writing was superb, not to mention completely engrossing and believable.
Although it scared me to death, I would have liked more Longmire vs the Wandering Without to be laced throughout the book. Bits are doled out on either side of this major event, including clues from his spirit guide Virgil White Buffalo, but more would have been better.
Instead, there are lighter moments as Longmire and Henry partner up. Jaya’s basketball games carry their own drama, both in terms of scoring and character development. Longmire has something to teach the touchy young woman and she emerges as an enigmatic character who’d do well to appear in future Longmire books.
DAUGHTER OF THE MORNING STAR was prompted by a Missing Persons flyer, much the same way the Detective Emilia Cruz series is inspired by the Desaparecido notices of the missing I read in Mexican and Central American
newspapers.
Author Craig Johnson gives us the disturbing statistics in a Foreword: Murder is the 3rd leading cause of death for Native American women. Half of all Native American women experience sexual violence or stalking.
DAUGHTER OF THE MORNING STAR is a worthy messenger to raise awareness. Highly recommended.
