Wind Spirit: An Ella Clah Novel [Hardcover]

Aimee Thurlo (Author), David Thurlo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 17, 2004

Before the new nuclear power plant can be built, the power company must help the Navajo reclaim a long-unused uranium mine. The plan is to collapse the old shafts and refill the area with new soil, but the first explosions trigger unplanned subsidiary collapses. Ella Clah, attending the dedication and purification ceremony, acts quickly when she sees a young child sliding into the exposed tunnels. She saves his life but is herself trapped underground.

A few days later, Ella, little the worse for her nightmarish near-death experience, is checking out reports of vandalism and arson. It seems that gun control advocates on the Rez have made some enemies-enemies who soon kill for the first time, when an arson fire claims the life of the wife of a Navajo Councilmember. The home of local radio host George Branch--who may have incited the fatal arson-burns to the ground, destroying all of Branch's personal possessions, including his extensive gun collection.

Ella's investigations are hampered by what happened to her at the uranium site. Both her brother Clifford, a Navajo medicine man, and her cousin and fellow Navajo Police officer, Justine Goodluck, are convinced that Ella wasn't just unconscious when she was rescued. To all appearances, they say, Ella was dead. Justine believes that Ella's survival was a miracle; Clifford says that his hataalii abilities showed her wandering wind spirit the way back to her body. Regardless, traditionalist Navajo are reluctant to be near or even speak to Ella, fearing that since she was dead, she has been contaminated with chindi and become evil. Even some of her fellow police officers are uncomfortable in Ella's presence.

If she cannot interview witnesses and can't work with other cops, what is Ella to do? She finds solace in the unquestioning and unchanging love of her young daughter and the unflagging support of her brother, who nonetheless recommends an older hataalii who may be able to perform a special blessing ceremony for Ella. Still, it's clear that Ella's life has been changed, perhaps permanently, and that she may no longer be an effective police officer.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

After last year's blandly botanical Plant Them Deep, the Thurlos make a refreshing return to an honest-to-goodness whodunit, in which Ella Clah, special investigator for the Navajo Tribal Police, undergoes such trauma that she's forced to rethink her priorities—and her entire life. When tribal councilman Lewis Hunt's invalid wife is burned to death in a suspicious house fire, Clah and her police team set out to prove arson and bring a killer to justice. But the solution turns out to be anything but simple. Local radio talk-show host George Branch has stirred up a hornet's nest regarding gun control and Hunt's stand for heavier restrictions. Branch soon finds himself a suspect in the fire investigation as well as the target of another misguided attempt to express someone's difference of opinion. And there's family trouble, too. Ella's medicine man brother, Clifford, tries to locate an elderly holy man who can perform the proper curing ceremony to alleviate the traditionalists' fears of Ella and her perceived "sickness," but meanwhile Clifford's busyness sends his wife Loretta to find more than just employment at the local college. There are no slow spots in the action as Clah dodges bullets, heads up a hostage rescue and battles her personal and job-related demons. Fans will delve into this one and feel right at home.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

All sorts of conflicts are built into this ninth installment in the Thurlos' series set on a Four Corners Navajo reservation and focusing on the work of Navajo Police Special Investigator Ella Clah. There is the inherent tension between the old, new, and neotraditional ways of the Navajos; there is conflict with outsiders; and there are the conflicts Clah faces between being a traditionally raised Navajo and a female cop in very untraditional circumstances. In a hair-raising opening, Clah's fall down an abandoned uranium mining shaft and the bizarre way in which she survives give her a whole new set of problems, since many Navajos believe she survived because she was helped by evil spirits. Clah is forced to track down a 90-year-old medicine man to cleanse her, a task made more daunting by a rash of arsons on the reservation, which quickly start claiming victims. The Thurlos hit all the right notes: they have an intriguing, growing character at the center of a series that combines fast-moving plots and a wealth of fascinating cultural information. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Forge Books; First Edition edition (April 17, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765304775
• ISBN-13: 978-0765304773
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #830,466 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Craftily Written Novel Rich in Navajo History, June 6, 2004

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Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wind Spirit: An Ella Clah Novel (Hardcover)

Aimee and David Thurlo have added a ninth installment to their Ella Clah series. These novels take place on a Four Corners, New Mexico reservation where Clah is a special investigator for the Navajo Tribal Police. Her family is "traditionalist" and her brother Clifford is a respected hataalli, or medicine man, who at the start of the book is singing hatals. "These songs of blessing compelled the Navajo gods to bring good luck to the land the yellow dust had corrupted and give it new life. Navajo prayers were not petitions. If recited just right, it was believed that the gods couldn't fail to comply."

The rituals are part of a ceremony to kick off the demolition of warrens of abandoned uranium mines that are a danger to the population. Their demise fills the hopes of the tribe, which are vested in "NEED, which stood for Navajo Electrical Energy Development ? the Navajo Nation's first step toward a more prosperous future." The abject poverty on the Rez is palpable and the "lack of funds still took a heavy toll on the tribe's ability to provide and maintain emergency services. Police equipment was badly outdated and salaries hadn't been improved in years. Even the hospital was understaffed."

Ella follows her nephew and his friend when they wander away from the crowd. She sensed the danger they were in as they played "somewhere behind a cluster of boulders several yards away." After a quiet "lecture" about learning patience and warning them about the sick land, her nephew falls off a plank and was pulled into an ever-widening hole. "He dangled helplessly over the edge, staring at her with terrified eyes. 'I'm going to fall!' " Finally, she manages to lift him up to safely. As she tried to save herself, "a wall of sand came sliding down and before she could cry out, Ella felt herself plummeting down a narrow tunnel." When she is found and rescued everyone thinks she is dead. The EMTs are no longer working on her and have covered her with a sheet. At first even her brother considered her to be dead. But after an out-of-body experience, "Ella pushes [the sheet] aside and sits up. No need for CPR ? it worked." Ella is back. But for a Navajo just "coming back" is not that easy.

Various and sundry legends, stories, myths and rituals comprise the traditional and modern Navajo belief systems. Some of these are contradictory and put Clah in the strange position of having to prove she has not been "touched" or "contaminated" or "taken over" by evil spirits. She had an experience the year before that convinced her that "she'd discovered ? skinwalkers --- Navajo witches known for their practices and rituals associated with the dead --- [who] were using [the] old mines for their own purposes." But on this happy day she was convinced that "skinwalkers had apparently stopped using this site after authorities had destroyed a few of the larger shafts."

Clifford says, "Her wind spirit has drifted. We, as Navajos, are taught that life begins when wind enters the body at birth and that death happens when it leaves through the fingertips. I've tried to convince the [traditionalists] that once the wind spirit leaves ? it never returns to the person it left behind. It waits for another to be born. So you couldn't have been dead."

To clear her path and remove the shadow of death that has now shrouded her, Ella must assuage the fears of some of her people. She must be the focus of an obscure ceremony or "Sing" that is required in the circumstances. Clifford tells her, "Only one hataalii knows the Sing you need --- hastiin sdni which means 'old man'; [so aged he] was to be in his nineties. [Unfortunately] the Singer [she needs] has gone off on a spiritual journey. He's visiting the shrines of his clan and could be nearly anywhere." Clah knows she has no choice but to go looking for this person, and the sooner she gets started the sooner the Sing can be performed.

At first she has no luck in tracking the old man down. But in the interim she's called out on a vandalism call and then an arson/murder. Both are connected to the activism of the victims who are fighting for handgun registration on the reservation. The woman who died in the fire had been in a wheelchair for years as a result of a gunshot wound. She and her husband were at the vanguard of the new legislation and obvious targets of the rednecks who saw them as enemies.

As events unfold Ella is caught up in maintaining her dignity and keeping the respect of the people to whom she feels responsible. WIND SPIRIT is a craftily written novel that is rich in Navajo history and life on the reservation. Both the lead and supporting characters are deftly fleshed out, which adds verisimilitude to the different issues that confront them throughout the novel. Tension is high when the vandals keep at their ugly mission, a hostage crisis becomes full blown, and dead bodies mount as gunshots ring out in deafening finality.

By the end of the book Clifford speaks to his sister: "I heard from the hataalii we've all been searching for. He's finished his other business and will be here today. The Sing can begin this afternoon." When he left her and she took stock of her situation she found "it was clear that she'd have her work cut out for her during the coming months [despite the cleansing of the Sing] but for now she'd restore her own inner balance and harmony by joining her family. It was time to walk in beauty."

--- Reviewed by Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Super mystery, March 30, 2004

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Wind Spirit: An Ella Clah Novel (Hardcover)

During the closing of the uranium mines at Four Corners in the Navaho Reservation in New Mexico, a child almost falls through an abandoned mine shaft. Navaho Police Special Investigator Elle Clah rescues him but falls in the hole and the ground offers no hard holds to pull herself out. She manages to attract someone?s attention but before she can be rescued, she is drowning in a sea of sand. When she is taken out, they pronounce her dead and put a sheet over her, but she suddenly jumps up very much alive. She had a near death experience and everything she believes about the afterlife is challenged.

The shaft she fell in was once used by Skinwalkers and because of that the fact that she was declared dead, the traditionalist and the new traditionalists want her to have a special sing to remove the taint of death that clings to her. Only one man alive knows it and nobody knows where he is. A crime wave of arson, murder and numerous attempts on Ella?s life breaks out and Ella is hampered in her investigation because many Navaho won?t deal with her until she has the sing.

Aimee and David Thurlo always writes a great Native American police procedural but this work is one of the best because after almost being killed Ella realizes she has to make some changes in her life. WIND SPIRIT is as much a mystery as it is an anthropological story of the Navaho lifestyle. It is fascinating to see how many different cultural groups live on the reservation. The authors educate as well as entertain the readers by incorporating social issues that must be addressed into the plot.

Harriet Klausner

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars SHADES OF SCARPETTA, April 28, 2004

By 

charles falk (Novato, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wind Spirit: An Ella Clah Novel (Hardcover)

I liked this book in spite of myself. It is a prime example of the "detective-as-target" school of mystery writing. Ella Clah not only has to cope with assorted bad guys trying to kill or maim her, she must also deal with being shunned by many of the traditionalist Navajos. Shades of Patricia Cornwell's persecuted heroine, Kate Scarpetta.

What redeemed the book in my eyes was that the Thurlos successfully mix Clah's police activities with details of the traditionalist practices of her mother and brother. The only homicide in the story is solved early. The remaining complications arise from factional conflict on the reservation. A couple of Ella's antagonists from previous books get their comeuppance. A pretty slight plot, but an enjoyable read.