Air of mystery: Leaphorn, Chee and Manuelito return in 'Shadow of the Solstice'

Two tense story threads course through Anne Hillerman’s latest mystery “Shadow of the Solstice,” the 10th in her “Leaphorn, Chee and Manuelito” series.

One thread is about a business based in Phoenix that hoodwinks Navajos and other Native Americans into thinking it offers them free drug and alcohol rehabilitation services. A fierce Diné grandmother, Mrs. Melia Raymond, is a central character in this fast-moving thread.

She makes sure she tags along with her teenage grandson Andrew, nicknamed Droid, for a free ride in a van from the Navajo Nation to Best Way Rehabilitation Center in Phoenix. She doesn’t think he’s strong enough on his own to say no to temptation.

Mrs. Raymond is right about her grandson’s weakness and she isn’t fooled by Best Way’s rehab claims. She suspects, correctly, that it’s a shady operation.

Indeed, Best Way secretly providing vulnerable clients booze, not water, while the firm gets reimbursed by the government for services and medicine it never provides.

Mrs. Raymond’s stealth getaway from the reservation leaves her home health worker, Darleen Manuelito, concerned about her whereabouts and her safety.

Darleen, the younger sister of Navajo police officer Bernadette Manuelito, eventually tracks down Mrs. Raymond and Droid, and in the process learns about a Phoenix cop who has his suspicions about Best Way.

The other major interlaced story opens the novel with the discovery of a body inside a fenced area where radioactive waste is buried. The waste is from nearby uranium mines.

It segues to the introduction of a cult that sets up at a campground on the Navajo Nation near Shiprock, timed with the summer solstice.

A flyer tells the public: “Solstice Meditation to Heal Mother Earth. All Welcome. Check In Ahead.”

The cult turns out to be far from healing or peaceful. One indication of its chicanery is the cult’s shoddy construction of a sweat lodge it built. The lodge is so poorly ventilated that it could kill its female occupants. It nearly does.

Officer Manuelito describes a few of the cult members as “a sexist, lying white guy who can’t stop talking, a muscleman who was in a fight, and two women who seem to be intimidated.”

Though the cult has endorsed the Navajo Nation’s opposition to uranium mining on its land, the endorsement masks the cult’s violent, hidden intent — kidnap, and if necessary, murder, a federal cabinet secretary who may visit Shiprock to announce the expansion of uranium mining near the Navajo Nation.

Bernadette and her husband, Navajo police Lt. Jim Chee, find themselves in harm’s way as they confront the cult’s criminal leadership.

The novel reveals the sharpening of roles of several of the main characters. One is Chee. When a Navajo police captain is suddenly taken to the ER with chest pains, Chee is asked to step in to organize tribal police protection supporting FBI agents in the event the cabinet secretary shows up.

Chee’s deft handling of that new role suggests he may be in line for a promotion.

Bernadette raises family issues in a book-ending talk with Chee. With her sister considering a move to Phoenix, Bernadette may be spending more time caring for their mother, who seems to be showing signs of more pronounced dementia.

Bernadette is also hinting to Chee that she’s “ready for a big change,” and hopes Chee is, too. Starting a family? Some readers of the series may recall that she suffered a miscarriage in the installment “The Way of the Bear.”

Hillerman’s carefully shaped plot lines and characters make her novels lively reading.

“The wonderful thing is that you don’t have to say everything in one book. I don’t have to be Charles Dickens. I can spread out the character arc,” she said in a phone interview.

In an author’s note, Hillerman explains how the twin story threads are based on real-life events.

Navajos and other Indigenous people were duped by operators of fraudulent drug and alcohol rehab centers in Arizona, primarily preying on people enrolled in the American Indian Health Program.

She writes that the Navajo Nation’s Operation Rainbow Bridge believes as many as 8,000 Navajo men and women may have been tricked. “Then they were abandoned in Phoenix and its suburbs,” Hillerman writes in the author’s note.

The scheme was also a massive Medicaid fraud, she notes.

The other story thread grew from what Hillerman says is the decadeslong history of exploitation of underground resources, especially uranium, on the Navajo Nation.

“A terrible legacy of disease and suffering is the apparent result of the exceptionally high level of uranium exposure among Navajo Nation residents. Birth defects, infertility, diabetes, kidney failure, lung disease and several kinds of cancer are among the health issues for the miners and their families. The problems continue,” Hillerman writes.

Air of mystery: Leaphorn, Chee and Manuelito return in 'Shadow of the Solstice'