No question, Tony Hillerman novels make a good poolside read: Each comes loaded with a dandy murder mystery, a healthy dose of folklore and plenty of cultural insights into Native American traditionalism versus modernism.
Rodney Barker's "The Broken Circle" follows much the same formula: a twisted murder mystery, plenty of social and political commentary and a dose of Navajo witchcraft.But what makes this book particularly compelling, albeit disturbing, is that unlike Hillerman's comparable "The Blessing Way" or "Skinwalkers," Barker's "The Broken Circle" is a non-fiction contemporary history of a racially motivated 1974 murder in Farmington, N.M.
It's real stuff. Bloody, disgusting, infuriating stuff involving real people with real families.
The story focuses on the murders of three Navajos, all of them town drunks, who were "rolled" by local high school kids in what was a perverse right-of-passage in the mid-1970s. Only these particular teenagers did more than beat and rob. They mutilated. They tortured. They killed.
And the Anglo system of justice determined the perpetrators - two of them 16 years old and one 15 years old - would never stand trial for the crimes but would instead spend the next two years in a New Mexico reform school. Navajos were outraged at the leniency.
Given the circumstances, Barker could easily have turned "The Broken Circle" into a vitriolic diatribe against white racism in the Southwest. He could have, but he didn't.
What makes the book work so well is that Barker, through thousands of interviews, examines the murders through a multitude of perspectives: the families of the victims and the perpetrators, the town fathers and the tribal elders, the Indian activists and the sheriff's investigators.
It is undeniably an ugly portrait of Farmington attitudes at the time. But it is also a surprisingly fair and accurate portrayal of modern Navajo-white relations, racial intolerance and a social system in which Indians have little, if any, control over their future.
A journalist by profession, Barker was sucked into the story in 1974. Navajos in Farmington were demonstrating against the participation of a U.S. Calvary unit in a local parade when the protest turned into a riot. Barker found himself among those arrested - he was the only white person - for obstructing a police officer.
While spending the next day in jail, he heard stories about weeks of civil unrest, about Navajos who had been mutilated and tortured by a handful of Farmington High School students, about a judge who had done little more than slap the wrists of the perpetrators.
"For murdering three Indians, the white boys had been given a legal spanking. And the Indian community was damned angry because it was one more example of the way white man's justice shorted Indians," Barker explains.
Despite the flurry of media attention, the story soon died. And with it, the fire that had burned within Barker in that Farmington jail cell slowly burned away. In 1988, Barker happened onto an artist from Farmington, and small talk led to a recounting of the story of the 1974 riot. When the man said he had gone to school with the perpetrators, Barker wondered aloud what had become of the three boys.
"You haven't heard?" he asked. "A Navajo shaman put a curse on them and
they're all dead."
Barker was hooked. The result is "The Broken Circle," an incredible tale that weaves together Navajo traditionalism, social injustices and racial tension into a complex fabric that mirrors life even today in reservation border towns.
Told alternately through police files and witness recollections, the story comes to life as Barker, using an effective first-person writing style, weaves in personal reflections garnered through interviews, hindsight and journalistic observations. The result is a commentary as good as any to come out of the Southwest.
The book has stirred a lot of emotion in Farmington, some praising it and others vilifying it. About 250 people showed up recently when Barker returned to Farmington for a book-signing session.
"We had hoped back in the '70s that Farmington would change its attitude toward American Indians. However, time tells us that it hasn't," said Navajo Councilwoman Genevieve Jackson of Shiprock, who protested during the summer of 1974.
Navajos are now watching another case to see what kind of justice the white courts have in store for Navajos. Last March, three Navajo men were severely beaten by two Anglo men, including the son of San Juan County, N.M., Magistrate Terry Pearson. The case is still pending before a magistrate.
"It's really disturbing and frightening," Jackson said.