The Death of Bernadette Lefthand

a novel by Ron Querry

232 pages, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2
$23.95 cloth, 1-878610-25-2

Full of serious tenets, this book imparts a fictional account of events and lifeways that are rooted in fact.

Published in German by Krüger, 1996 and in French by Editions du Rocher, 1996

Border Regional Library Association, Southwest Book Award, 1994

Mountains & Plains Booksellers Association Award, 1994

In this novel, set on the Navajo and Jicarilla Apache lands, mystery surrounds the senseless death of the beautiful and spirited Bernadette Lefthand, a young Indian woman with a loving husband, a new baby, and a penchant for dancing.

Through powerful magic, evil forces pervade the lives of those closest to Bernadette, pointing suspicion to family and friends. Clues to her brutal murder unfold as various narrataive voices focus on the contradictions of white and Indian cultures on the one hand and the most heinous of all Navajo crimes--witchcraft--on the other.

Ron Querry, a mixed-blood descendant of the Sixtown Clan of the Choctaw Nation (Okla-honeli), is a member by blood of the Choctaw tribe. The author of three previous books and a member of the Native Writers Circle of the Americas, he holds a Ph. D. in American Studies from the University of New Mexico. Querry has taught at universities in Oklahoma, New MExico, and Ohio and worked as a ranch hand and wrangler, horse trainer and farrier, served as a racing official, and edited a national quarter horse racing publication.

A fine vignette of modern Indian existence, giving readers a genuinely felt view of the pow-wows, dances, rodeos, alcoholism, intertribal rivalry and poverty that are facts of life for many native Americans.

--Publishers Weekly