Denver author Margaret Coel returns to the Wind River Reservation of Wyoming in The Silent Spirit, a new mystery featuring John Aloysius O’Malley, a Jesuit missionary, and Vicky Holden, an Arapaho attorney. Father John and Vicky delve into the reservation's past when an Arapaho and his great-grandson are murdered nearly a century apart.
Kiki Wallowingbull is found dead on the frozen banks of the Little Wind River and the murder appears to be the result of a drug deal gone bad. However, Kiki had recently returned from Hollywood where he was trying to uncover the mystery of his great-grandfather's disappearance while filming a 1923 Western. Many Arapahos and Shoshones went to Hollywood to find work in silent movies but Kiki's great-grandfather never returned to his wife and child. Are the two events somehow connected?
Kirkus gave the book an excellent review, calling it “Another of Coel's engaging blends of history, mystery, sexual tension and present-day life on the reservation.”
Originally an historian by trade, Coel is considered an expert on the Arapaho Indians. You can read about the Reservation, which is a real place -- spanning 2.2 million acres and home to 2,500 Eastern Shoshone and more than 5,000 Northern Arapaho Indians -- and find out a bit of background information about the Arapaho culture on her website.
The author says “The story connects with the audience that loves mystery novels, novels about the West, its history and people, and novels about contemporary Native Americans. The Silent Spirit will also appeal to film buffs, since it moves back and forth between the present and 1920s Hollywood when the Arapahos appeared in many of the silent Westerns.”
She adds “The Silent Spirit is the 14th novel in my New York Times bestselling series, but readers can jump in at any time. They do not have to have read the earlier novels to enjoy the latest.”
For a complete list, visit Stop,You’re Killing Me!
You can see the author in a series of clips on YouTube in an interview with Barbara Peters of Poisoned Pen Press and Bookstore taped last November.
The cover art for The Silent Spirit is magnificent and I, for one, am glad to be back on the Rez with Father John, who was sent off on a sabbatical to Rome at the end of The Girl with Braided Hair, the previous book in the series published back in 2007. Glad they let him come home.
