Tony Hillerman - by James McGrath Morris (Hardcover)

About the Book

Morris offers a balanced portrait of Hillerman's personal and professional life and provides a timely appreciation of his work. Filled with never-before-told anecdotes and fresh insights, Tony Hillerman will thrill the author's fans and awaken new interest in his life and literary legacy.

Book Synopsis

2022 Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award Finalist

The author of eighteen spellbinding detective novels set on the Navajo Nation, Tony Hillerman simultaneously transformed a traditional genre and unlocked the mysteries of the Navajo culture to an audience of millions. His best-selling novels added Navajo Tribal Police detectives Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee to the pantheon of American fictional detectives.

Morris offers a balanced portrait of Hillerman's personal and professional life and provides a timely appreciation of his work. In intimate detail, Morris captures the author's early years in Depression-era Oklahoma; his near-death experience in World War II; his sixty-year marriage to Marie; his family life, including six children, five of them adopted; his work in the trenches of journalism; his affliction with PTSD and its connection to his enchantment with Navajo spirituality; and his ascension as one of America's best-known writers of mysteries. Further, Morris uncovers the almost accidental invention of Hillerman's iconic detective Joe Leaphorn and the circumstances that led to the addition of Jim Chee as his partner.

Hillerman's novels were not without controversy. Morris examines the charges of cultural appropriation leveled at the author toward the end of his life. Yet, for many readers, including many Native Americans, Hillerman deserves critical acclaim for his knowledgeable and sensitive portrayal of Diné (Navajo) history, culture, and identity.

At the time of Hillerman's death, more than 20 million copies of his books were in print, and his novels inspired Robert Redford to adapt several of them to film. In weaving together all the elements of Hillerman's life, Morris drew on the untapped collection of the author's papers, extensive archival research, interviews with friends, colleagues, and family, as well as travel in the Navajo Nation. Filled with never-before-told anecdotes and fresh insights, Tony Hillerman will thrill the author's fans and awaken new interest in his life and literary legacy.

Review Quotes

"In Tony Hillerman: A Life, award-winning biographer James McGrath Morris tracks the author's movements with thriller-like pacing. From Hillerman's formative combat tours in World War II to his years at the Santa Fe New Mexican to his latter-day incarnation as a chronicler of the Navajo way of life, Morris colors in the shadows of one of New Mexico's best-loved authors."--New Mexico Magazine


"Skillfully written, Hillerman's fans will want to give this a look."--Publishers Weekly


"The biography, like Hillerman's fiction, is deeply researched, lovingly detailed and eminently readable."--Albuquerque Journal


"This first major biography of iconic Western mystery novelist Tony Hillerman is substantial, engrossing and often surprising."--Roundup Magazine, Western Writers of America


"Here at last we have a biography of one of the true masters of detective fiction, and one of the most popular and perspicacious writers ever to call the Desert Southwest home. In this scrupulous work, James McGrath Morris artfully guides us into Tony Hillerman's personal and literary worlds--and taps into the peculiar magic of this beloved novelist's work. Diehard fans and neophytes alike will gain intriguing insights into how Hillerman was able to spin those unforgettable mysteries set in the red rock kingdom of the Navajo."--Hampton Sides, author of Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II's Greatest Rescue Mission

"James McGrath Morris's telling of Tony Hillerman's life is a delicious weave of the man, the times that made the man, and how he shaped those times. After reading Tony Hillerman, I feel, rather than having met Tony once and admired him for decades, I have been his friend forever. Or, more to the point, I wish I was."--Nevada Barr, author of the Anna Pigeon mystery series

"A towering figure in the realm of mystery fiction like Tony Hillerman is worthy of a biography of monumental proportions, a book that can encompass the grace, talent, and humanity of not only the man but his incredible body of work. James McGrath Morris's Tony Hillerman: A Life is that book--one of the most thoughtful, detailed, and captivating biographies I've read in a very long time."--Craig Johnson, author of the Walt Longmire Mysteries


"James McGrath Morris's Tony Hillerman is beautiful and fascinating biography, not just the life of a remarkable writer but also a vivid depiction of the world that Hillerman grew up in--the American West, ranch and church, the war--and his career as a reporter and novelist that culminated, late in life, in international fame and best-sellerdom. Hillerman was a huge inspiration to me as a young writer. I truly love this book."--Douglas Preston, author of The Lost City of the Monkey God and the Agent Pendergast series


From James McGrath Morris--author of superb biographies--comes this remarkably rich, absorbing, and varied life of beloved mystery writer Tony Hillerman. With his canny eye for the telling detail, Morris tracks the author's evolution from a poor Oklahoma boy growing up alongside members of the Citizen Potawatomie Nation to a reporter plying the streets of small towns and New Mexico's state capital, a journey also marked by harrowing combat in the Battle of the Bulge. Tony Hillerman is packed with insight into how a journalist revamped the mystery genre even as he became one of its most original and gifted practitioners, introducing readers to the extraordinary lifeways and beliefs of the Navajo and other Southwestern peoples. Providing a deft and nuanced look at issues surrounding cultural appropriation, this is a biography that becomes, as Hillerman termed facts transformed by imagination, "the stuff of art."--Caroline Fraser, author of Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder