Great Reads for Great Readers

 

Winter Counts, by David Heska Wanbli Weiden.

 

            This is Lakota Author Weiden’s debut novel. It is a worthy addition to the Thriller genre, but there is so much more to read between the lines, and the lines themselves can be brutally honest about the Land of the Free, especially in South Dakota on the Rosebud Indian Reservation – the Rez.

            Virgil Wounded Horse is the local Fixer:  because the tribal police are paper tigers and the Federal authorities are not interested in prosecuting rapes, child abuse, domestics and all the usual ‘minor’ crimes, he is seen as the Last Resort, the real law, the rough justice who, because of his superior size, speed and nous, always gets a fitting revenge for his clients.  Money well spent, and if the cause is particularly close to his heart (like child abuse), he’ll rearrange his quarry’s features (and future) for free.

            When he is hired by an ambitious tribal councilman to find the source of new sales of heroin entering the Rez, he regards this latest job as strictly business – until his 14 year-old nephew nearly dies of an overdose.  Now, it is frighteningly personal:  whichever sumbitch started this ball rolling will wish he had never been born – as he dies a horrible death.

            Virgil’s detective-work eventually leads him to Denver where he discovers that the Mexican cartels are interested in flooding northern Reservations with heroin, aided by local criminal Rick Crow, a Lakota who bullied Virgil mercilessly at school for being a ‘half-breed’.  Yes, there is very old bad blood here, but new problems arise:  the FBI, famous for their lack of interest in anything connected with Rez crime unless – unless – it’s connected to murders and drugs, want Virgil’s nephew (his only family member still alive!) to wear a wire, and buy black tar heroin on the high school grounds from Rick Crow and his gang. Then they can make an arrest.  It’s almost more than Virgil can bear to think about and, if it weren’t for his nephew’s agreement to go along with the FBI’s plan, he’d send that boy off to Mars, rather than consent to such a scheme.

            As always, things go horribly wrong;  there is a mighty twist to the tale that I never saw coming, and Virgil learns yet again how power and ambition can banish the finest dreams – BUT.  What also comes through loud and clear is the struggle to build a decent existence for the first inhabitants of their beautiful land, and the enormous difficulty in retaining their precious native identity, essence, ageless customs and spirituality in the face of The American Dream.  A dream that is broken.  Weiden and Virgil, telling it like it really is.  FIVE STARS.