One hundred and eighty years ago, the Cherokee were forced from their land in the southeast United States to the new Indian Territory on the Trail of Tears. While exact numbers are hard to come by, the casualty rate was appalling. Those who did survive held on to their traditional ways the best they could and their descendants still live mainly in Oklahoma. Mysteries being a favorite genre of mine, here are two series and one standalone featuring the Cherokee.
Sadie Walela and her wolfdog Sonny help out Lance Smith and the rest of the Delaware County sheriff's department in Sara Sue Hoklotubbe's series. Walela is likeable, like most of the good guys in these books, and they are peppered with Cherokee traditions. Hoklotubbe is good at creating suspense and a sense of place in these fast reads.
Jean Hager writes small-town procedurals starring tribal member and police chief Mitchell Bushyhead. There are plenty of quirky characters to go around in these intricately plotted mysteries, and the charming Bushyhead's personal life often intervenes. Cherokee beliefs often play a pivotal role in these leisurely-paced books.
Shoot the Moon is Billie Letts' contribution to the Cherokee mystery subgenre. A man comes to small-town Oklahoma looking for his birth mother and cracks open a wasp's nest of secrets. Nicky Jack Harjo's Cherokee mother was murdered, and no one knows who Harjo's father is. A local preacher was accused of the crime, and supposedly committed suicide in jail. None of it adds up. While Letts populates her novel with some stock characters, eccentrics balance it out and this one is good for a lazy afternoon.
Got more whodunits set in Indian Territory? Tell us about them in the comments.
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