The Dark Wind
Harper & Row, 1982. Illustrated by Ernest Franklin. First Edition, First Printing. Cloth & Boards. , Fine. Item #5202
ISBN: 0060149361
A handsome First Edition, First Printing of the Jim Chee mystery signed by the author on the half-title page. The book is in blue and navy cloth & boards and is in beautiful condition. 214 pp. The fine dustjacket is complete with the original price and is protected by an archival plastic cover. This book was made into a major motion picture in 1991 produced by Robert Redford and starring Lou Diamond Phillips as Officer Jim Chee. A lovely copy, with the dust jacket illustrated by long time artist and Hillerman collaborator Ernest Franklin. "Dark Winds" is a 2022 AMC adaptation produced by George R. R. Martin and Robert Redford, who once again returned to the material.
Hillerman stated throughout interviews that the American Southwest landscape was akin to a character in his novels and that he spent a considerable amount of time trying to best describe the ancient Navajo sites, down to the texture and sounds, tastes and smells of those specific areas. In the article "Crime and Navajo Punishment," published by Southwest Review, Jack W. Schneider explores Hillerman's use of landscape, especially how it relates to solving the crimes that take place on the Navajo Reservations: "Hillerman has richly textured his narratives with graphic scenes of a southwestern landscape that is at once beautiful and terrible to behold….setting becomes more than just a colorful but passive background against which the drama of crime and pursuit is set in relief. Rather, setting assumes an active role in the novels, determining the nature of and the circumstances surrounding the crime, shaping and controlling the detection process itself, and dictating the terms of the resolution…Only in terms of the two detectives' intimate knowledge of their people’s customs and myths do the clues necessary to solving the crimes take on significance—a significance that would be lost on a non-Indian.”
Hillerman's use of landscape is so expansive that a 2011 book titled "Tony Hillerman's Navajoland: Hideouts, Haunts, and Havens in the Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee Mysteries" was published to help categorize the geographical locations mentioned throughout his books. For "The Dark Wind," author Laurance D. Lindford has listed approximately 63 locations mentioned.
Price: $280.00 other currencies