Anne Hillerman's "Spider Woman's Daughter"

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Anne Hillerman's debut novel, Spider Woman's Daughter, is a mystery set in the Southwest, including the Navajo Nation and Santa Fe. The book follows the further adventures of the characters Tony Hillerman made famous: Jim Chee, Joe Leaphorn and Bernadette Manuelito. Anne Hillerman also is the author of the award-winning Tony Hillerman's Landscape: On the Road with Chee and Leaphorn and eight other books.

Here she dreamcasts an adaptation of Spider Woman's Daughter:

I'd love to see an actress with charm, brains, and athletic ability play Bernadette Manuelito. A Navajo actress would be best, of course. I loved Adam Beach and Wes Studi in the Robert Redford/PBS movies that were made of my Dad's Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee stories and I'd enjoy them again in Spider Woman's Daughter.

Other roles? Because New Mexico, my home state, has a growing movie industry it would please me to see as many locals, especially American Indians, hired as possible. And because the setting plays a big role in my book, locations will have a crucial part in making the movie a blockbuster. It would be cool to have it filmed on location in Santa Fe, Gallup, Shiprock and Toadlena, New Mexico, in Windowrock, Arizona, and the beautiful country near Cortez, Colorado. Chaco Canyon World Heritage Site, (home of 53 acres of ruins!), also in New Mexico, should have a leading role. That place takes my breath away and reverberates with its own unsolved mysteries.

Learn more about the book and author at Anne Hillerman's website.

--Marshal Zeringue