Writer gives her late father’s characters new life
After mystery writer Tony Hillerman died in 2008, readers repeatedly asked his daughter Anne the same question: Does he have another manuscript in his computer or in a desk drawer?
“I would get it all the time: ‘Oh, we love those characters, and we’re going to miss them,’ ” Anne Hillerman says. “And in a way, I was just like those fans because after I got over the worst of missing my dad, I was really missing those characters.”
In Navajo Tribal Police officers Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, Hillerman created two characters who were featured in 18 atmospheric novels that inspired both film and TV adaptations. “The Shape Shifter,” Hillerman’s final book in the series, was published in 2006.
Anne Hillerman, a newspaper journalist in New Mexico, has written several books of non-fiction, including “Tony Hillerman’s Landscape: On the Road With Chee and Leaphorn,” which looked at reallife locales used in the novels. That project forced her to reread her father’s novels.
“It reacquainted me with the characters in a very special way,” she says. “I always did feel like Joe Leaphorn and Jim
Chee were part of my family. If Dad had a particularly good day of writing, he would be talking about Leaphorn as if he were his brother, so I always felt like I really knew these people.”
She decided to create her own book featuring the Navajo cops tangled in a new mystery. First, she cleared the idea with her mother. She then checked in with her father’s editor at HarperCollins and received the publisher’s blessing. She promised the imprint it would get first crack at releasing the book.
Still, in the early stages of writing, Hillerman wasn’t positive the book would be completed. She had never published fiction before.
“I was really over- whelmed when I was thinking of this as a first novel,” she says. “Then, when I started thinking of it as the 19th novel in a popular series, well, that’s a whole different perspective.”
She chose not to ape her father’s writing style in “Spider Woman’s Daughter,” but she doesn’t sound wildly different, either.
“I wasn’t trying to echo my father’s voice,” she says. “But I think partly because of my background in journalism, I am partial to short sentences and concise writing to get the job done, as my dad was. Plus, having spent so much time in the presence of his work obvi- ously did influence me. I’m lucky that Dad was such a good writer.”
A great pleasure for Hillerman was expanding the role of Bernadette Manuelito, Chee’s wife and a fellow cop. In her father’s books, Bernadette usually stayed on the sidelines.
“I thought it would be fun for Bernie to act like a real cop and not get rescued and be able to solve the crime,” Hillerman says. “I always thought she was a real good character and she deserves to have her own book where she gets to be the main character.”
The book has been well-received by critics and fans. Hillerman owes HarperCollins a second book in the series and hopes more will follow.
“Every day, I open little e-mail notes from people saying they’re so glad to see these characters back,” she says. “I think I underestimated how much goodwill my father had generated in the three decades he wrote this series.”
At times, it also has stirred up a daughter’s feelings of grief. While writing “Spider Woman’s Daughter,” she constant- ly thought about how her father would handle particular situations. Doing publicity for the book has stirred those feelings again.
“The whole process has been emotional,” she says. “Actually, I’ve been in tears this whole time talking about it. This month, doing publicity and interviews, has been like a big vortex, as they
would say in Sedona.”