Land of Echoes: A Cree Black Novel (Cree Black Thrillers) [Paperback]

Daniel Hecht (Author)

Book Description

Series: Cree Black Thrillers | Publication Date: January 13, 2005

Parapsychologist Cree Black is called to a New Mexico school for gifted Navajo teens to investigate the mysterious symptoms of a student. Sixteen-year-old Tommy Keeday is wracked nightly with violent convulsions. Is the boy possessed by the spirit of an ancestor, as his family believes? Or is something even more sinister going on?

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hecht takes another step toward his grand goal of setting a supernatural mystery in every U.S. state with this second in the Cree Black series. City of Masks, the well-received first installment, featured a haunted mansion in New Orleans; here, Hecht crafts a novel of possession set in Tony Hillerman territory, the sun-baked high desert mesas of western New Mexico. Fifteen-year-old Tommy Keeday, a student at a boarding school for gifted American Indians, has bizarre seizures with no physical explanation. The local Navajos think the boy is possessed by a chindi, an ancestral spirit bent on seizing control of his tormented body. Parapsychologist and natural empath Lucretia "Cree" Black, one of a three-person team of high-tech ghost hunters, is called in to solve the mystery of the boy's supernatural illness. Cree explains a ghost as "fragments of a once-living human personality that somehow keep manifesting in the absence of a physical body." If she can puzzle out what the ghost wants, she reasons, then it can be banished. Hecht's novel has an extensive cast of characters, each burdened with a painful past or dark secret that eventually appears in the complex fabric of the plot. This multitude of stories plus the exhaustive evocations of local history and geography sometimes obscure the plight of poor tortured Tommy, but determined readers will find sufficient goose-bump material to make up for the overly detailed justifications.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

At a New Mexico boarding school for gifted Navajo children, a 15-year-old boy endures a series of violent, agonizing seizures. The boy's convulsions are all the more troubling because extensive medical tests have ruled out a physical cause--and because the boys surrounding him during his seizures seem to become paralyzed by the same force. Parapsychologist Cree Black (who made an impressive debut in City of Masks, 2003) is almost forcibly brought in on the case by her mentor and is soon convinced that the boarding school is facing a bout with demonic possession. As with the first Cree Black novel, Hecht balances paranormal phenomena with everyday concerns (the endangered status of the school should tales of possession creep out). The isolation of the sagebrush desert surrounding the school is especially effective here, as are the ties with the Navajo legends of malevolent ghosts and skinwalkers. Creepy and convincing. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (January 13, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582344736
• ISBN-13: 978-1582344737
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #347,103 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely 5 stars!!!, March 3, 2004

By 

Jessica Pope (Queens, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Land of Echoes: A Cree Black Novel (Cree Black Thrillers) (Hardcover)

As a long time Daniel Hecht fan, I could not wait for this next installment of the Cree Black series, and "Land of Echoes" does not disappoint. Hecht adds several new characters to his already stellar cast (Cree, Edgar, Joyce) and they are excellently rendered. Tommy's plight is fascinating and creepy and heartbreaking. The descriptions of Navajo country and people are beautiful, and easy to imagine, and they provide the loveliness and mystery which defines this book. It is a rich and exciting read. I highly recommend "Land of Echoes"!!!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Cree Black series is a winner!, March 6, 2006

By 

Mary E. Williams "babywatson" (Manassas, Virginia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Land of Echoes: A Cree Black Novel (Cree Black Thrillers) (Paperback)

I really enjoyed City of Masks, so when I finished that, I searched out to find if the author had written additional books with his character Cree Black. To my joy, he had one other, this book. A new Cree Black book is due in June.

Cree Black is a parapsychologist with an empathic ability to bond with her clients. Cree had been married ten years ago to Mike, who was killed in Los Angeles in a car crash. At the moment of his death, Cree was in Philadelphia and saw Mike standing twenty feet away from her in a crowd. He looked like a man with shocking news to tell. Cree went to meet him and found to her confusion that Mike was gone.

In her grief over Mike's death, Cree became a parapsychologist and now tries to help people with their own hauntings. Cree is called in to examine a fifteen year old Navajo boy at a boarding school who is manifesting symptoms of posession by an unknown entity. The story of her attempts to identify the spirit and why it is haunting the boy is the plot of the book.

It gets a little slow in some areas, but I'm glad I perservered. I would start out with the first novel, City of Masks, first, to get a better understanding of the character.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fast-paced and involving. Highly recommended., August 10, 2004

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Land of Echoes: A Cree Black Novel (Cree Black Thrillers) (Hardcover)

Parapsychology fans will relish the return of Cree Black, who becomes immersed in a case of spiritual possession which will test all her resources and draw them into a dangerous New Mexican desert confrontation. A talented Navajo student falls ill with violent seizures attributed to the spirit of a dead ancestor, involving Cree in a dangerous world of spreading possession which keeps Land Of Echoes fast-paced and involving. Highly recommended.