Tony Hillerman
Activity Sheet

Biography
Tony Hillerman, novelist and journalist, was born May 27, 1925, and grew up at St. Mary's Academy, a boarding school for Native American girls at Sacred Heart-a Catholic mission formerly located in Pottawatomie County near Asher, Oklahoma. Hillerman once said of the nuns at Sacred Heart, "They eventually forgave my brother (photographer Barney Hillerman) and I for not being Indian, but they never forgave us for not being girls."
In 1943, he joined the U. S. Army, serving in combat in World War II. He was awarded the Silver Star, the Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster, and the Purple Heart after being wounded in 1945. (These injuries included broken legs, foot, ankle, facial burns, and temporary blindness.) He was discharged in 1945.
Hillerman earned a B.A. at the University of Oklahoma in 1946, and an M.A. from the University of New Mexico in 1966. He worked as a newspaper editor in Lawton and as a political reporter for United Press International in Oklahoma City.
As a novelist, he won the Edgar Allen Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1974 for Dance Hall of the Dead (Harper 1973). Hillerman was also inducted into the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame in 1993 and won the Oklahoma Center for the Book Lifetime Achievement Award Winner in 1991. His novels, which focus predominantly on Navajo themes, include: The Blessing Way, The Boy Who Made Dragonfly, Listening Woman, A Thief ofTime, Talking God, Sacred Clowns, The Fallen Man, and The First Eagle.
Hillerman is professor of journalism at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Although he says he feels great for the shape he's in, his health has been a concern. He told PBS in 1996, " I am 71, have now-and-then rhematic arthritis but now very badly, have in-remission cancer, have had a minor heart attack, have one mediocre eye, one tricky ankle and two unreliable knees due to being blown up in WWII. "
He married Marie Unzner in 1948, to whom he is still married. They have six grown children. His memoirs, entitled Seldom Disappointed, will be published in October, 2001. His newest mystery will be called Golden Calf and is due out in 2002. He resides in Albuquerque, NM.

A Thief of Time
Book Description from amazon.com
A noted anthropologist vanishes at a moonlit Indian ruin where "thieves of time" ravage sacred ground for profit. When two corpses appear amid stolen goods and bones at an ancient burial site, Navajo Tribal Policemen Lt. Joe Leaphorn and Officer Jim Chee must plunge into the past to unearth the astonishing truth behind a mystifying series of horrific murders. Read an exerpt.

The Blessing Way
Book Description from amazon.com
High on the desolate mesa they found the body.  The mouth was filled with sand.  No tracks, no clues.  Every Navajo knew that nothing human killed like that.
Rumors of witchcraft and the supernatural are nothing new to Lt. Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo Tribal Police.  He and anthropologist Bergen McKee had stalked the Wolf-Witch before.  Always it had eluded them, vanishing like a ghost on the wind.  But never had it left such a horrifying trail of murder.
For Lt. Leaphorn, the case was a baffling challenge to his logic.  For Bergen McKee, it was a problem of academic concern. Now, no longer is tracking the Navajo Wolf simply a challenge - now it's a matter of life and death. Read an exerpt.

Unofficial Tony Hillerman Homepage
http://www.umsl.edu/~smueller/

Hillerman Country
http://www.mysterynet.com/hillerman/

Book Page Interview
http://www.bookpage.com/9809bp/tony_hillerman.html