Synopses & Reviews
Once and FBI agent, Ella Clah is now a Special Investigator with the Navajo Police. She walks a tightrope between the Navajo and white worlds, fully accepted by neither but needed by both. Ella's brother, Clifford, a
hataali or medicine man, says that her investigative skills are a gift from the spirits who guard and guide the Dineh, but Ella insists it's her FBI training that has honed her instincts.
Ella's life is about to change in ways she can barely begin to imagine--she is newly pregnant, and though she knows who the father is, she will not marry him. In Navajo society, her child will be of her clan, and will be accepted by her family, no matter what--but how can she stay a police officer, exposing herself and her unborn child to terrible danger day after day?
Given her current caseload, it's hard for Ella to put off making a final decision about her career. There's a near-riot at LabKote, a factory on the Reservation that produces high-quality vessels for medical labs. The Fierce Ones, an activist group of Navajo, are insisting that more native workers be hired by the firm--including a Navajo replacement for a manager recently found dead in his car, an apparent suicide. A sniper shoots at Ella as she drives to another crime scene--the home of State Senator James Yellowhair, who has been kidnapped.
Feuding between traditionalist and modernist elements in the Navajo nation heats up with sabotage, vandalism, and murder, spurred by a rise in birth defects among the Dineh's livestock and rustling of sheep and cattle. Ella's personal concerns mount when officers investigating a break-in at the health clinic discover that the records of several pregnant women--including Ella--are missing. Then one of the pregnant women is murdered....
Review
"Mystery readers who like their murders solved by applied intelligence will love Ella Clah." --
Tony Hillerman
Synopsis
Have the pregnant Navajo women at a health clinic been exposed to whatever is causing the rise in birth defects among the livestock? To Ella Clah, that question is very important--she is pregnant. And she has lost her greatest ally--her brother, a medicine man, has sided with her foes.
About the Author
Aimée and David Thurlo have been married for more than thirty years and have been writing novels together for nearly that long, in a variety of genres including romance, young adult, and mystery. They have three ongoing mystery series, the
Sister Agatha series, starring a cloistered nun, the
Lee Nez series, featuring a Navajo vampire who teams up with a female FBI agent to fight crimes that have elements of the supernatural, and their flagship series, the critically-acclaimed
Ella Clah novels. Several Ella Clah novels, including T
racking Bear, Red Mesa, and
Shooting Chant, have received starred reviews from Booklist.
David Thurlo was raised on the Navajo Indian Reservation and later taught school in Shiprock, also on the Rez. Aimée, a native of Havana, Cuba, has lived in New Mexico for more than thirty years. The Thurlos share their home with dogs, horses, and various pet rodents. They have written more than fifty novels which have been published in more than twenty countries.