Johnson explores violence against Native Americans

“Daughter of the Morning Star,” by Craig Johnson (Viking)

“Daughter of the Morning Star” is Craig Johnson’s 17th novel featuring Absaroka County Sheriff Walt Longmire, where the author uses the mystery genre to raise awareness about violence against Native American women, half of whom are reported to have been victims of sexual violence and who are murdered at ten times the national average.

In pursuing this new case, Longmire encounters dysfunctional families and white supremacists while grappling with a life-draining Cheyenne spirit known as The Wandering Without, “the nothing, the thing that takes and never gives.” Johnson’s series often contains spiritual elements, and this time around there are moments in which neither the reader nor Longmire can be sure what is real and what is not.

As usual with this series, the characters are well drawn and the suspenseful plot takes some surprising twists. However, the author’s prose, which is usually first-rate, falters when he writes about basketball. In the acknowledgments, he credits a high school basketball coach with helping him understand the game, but the descriptions of practices and tournament games are clumsy and sometimes hard to follow.