Books This Week

 

The Story of the Forest by Linda Grant doesn’t live up to its promise as a family saga. It tells the story of an immigrant Jewish family who come to Liverpool, England, just before the first World War, and despite their intentions of continuing onward to America, somehow never leave. It’s clear that this book is an effort to reconstruct the author’s own family history, based on rather sketchy information and a few often-retold stories. Indeed, it’s much too close to the way personal stories come off: a bit vague and tentative, somewhat pointless, lacking the power of a strong narrative voice or a really vivid central character. Wimpy. Sad. Not up to some of Linda Grant’s best fiction, of which my favorite is When I Lived in Modern Times, which won the Orange Prize in 2000.

Ursula Le Guin (1929-2018) was a fantastically imaginative writer, and I’ve read many of her books. This was her last book, published in 2008. It’s based on the Aeneid of Vergil, which I have never read, so it was entirely new to me, and I have no idea how Le Guin’s novel borrows from the original. I know only that Le Guin says that the title character, Lavinia, was only named, not developed by Vergil, and the detailed life of Lavinia was thus entirely her creation. Of course Le Guin brings the character to life in a wonderful and very readable way, and this book is genuinely a good read.

In the Afterword, Le Guin makes a point that I find especially important in thinking back on my experience reading this novel:

“From the Middle Ages on, the so-called dead language Latin was, through its literature, intensely alive, active, and influential. That’s no longer true. During the last century, the teaching and learning of Latin began to wither away into a scholarly specialty. So, with the true death of his language, Vergil’s voice will be silenced at last. This is an awful pity, because he is one of the great poets of the world.

“His poetry is so profoundly musical, its beauty is so intrinsic to the sound and order of the words, that it is essentially untranslatable. … More than anything else, my story is an act of gratitude to the poet, a love offering” (p. 359)

We never miss a new novel about the Navajo detectives Joe Leaphorn, Jim Chee, and Bernadette Manuelito. In this one, published quite recently, Chee and Manuelito — a husband and wife, both police officers — are subject to all kinds of terrible risks, and are both almost killed by the criminals they are investigating. Poor Bernie, she’s always a victim of some violence, but of course she outsmarts her opponents every time and quickly gets over whatever injuries she suffers. No surprises here. 

Shadow of the Solstice is interesting for the author’s focus on actual current issues for Southwest Indian tribes. There issues as a driving force in the two intertwined detective assignments of Chee and Manuelito. One issue is the continuing problems on the Navajo reservation caused by uranium mining in the past, and the necessity to block new efforts at destructive and damaging extraction of minerals from the territory. 

The other plot element is based on an actual series of fraudulent claims for social benefits in which criminal scammers tricked members of the tribe into cheating the government. These fraudsters exploited their Indian victims and left them in desperate straits, including homelessness, worse addiction, and even death. In the novel, the scammers are caught and the victims mainly rescued.

Joe Leaphorn, the original detective in the series, is mentioned but he never actually appears in this novel. After the original author of the series, Tony Hillerman, died in 2008, his daughter has continued to write a book just about every year, and though the detectives age slowly, it’s apparent that Joe must be well into his nineties and not really very active even as a retired mentor. Jim Chee first appeared in 1980 in the novel People of Darkness. But we won’t calculate how old he would be if he aged like real people.

There are now around 25 books in the series beginning with The Blessing Way in 1970. I’ve read them all, and reread some of them. I like that the detectives still enjoy a stop at a diner for coffee at a tense moment, or some fresh, home-made fry bread like this treat enjoyed by Jim Chee:

“An irresistible aroma had begun to fill his patrol unit. He could tell without opening the bag that Mrs. Yazzie had given him fry bread, freshly made in her own kitchen. He started to salivate. He reached in, grabbed the piece on top, as big as a dinner plate, pulled a bit free, and took a bite. He chewed slowly, savoring it as if it were his last meal.” (p. 174)

I wouldn’t say that Shadow of the Solstice is the best of the series, but it’s ok.

New Mexico landscape from our 2015 visit. The landscape is always a big part of the story in all the Navajo detective books.

Blog post © 2025 mae sander