Author: Kendra Winchester

Rita Todacheene is a Diné woman working for the Albuquerque police department as a forensic photographer when she comes across one of the worst cases she’s ever seen: a woman has fallen over the side of an overpass to her death. Rita is one of the best photographers in the business, but she has a secret: she can see ghosts. Seeing the spirits of the dead has given her an edge in her career, but it’s also incredibly dangerous.

Rita was raised by her grandmother on the Navajo reservation. Her grandmother knew of her gifts, but tried to instill in Rita a deep respect for the dead. Now Rita must figure out what happened to the dead woman before her angry spirit causes Rita harm.

Emerson does a great job of setting up our protagonist. I’ve read a lot of mysteries around someone solving crime, but I’d never read a book centered around a forensic photographer before. Plus, the fact that Rita can see ghosts throws an interesting wrench into the mix. The mystery itself takes some surprising turns, playing with readers’ assumptions about the suspects.

The novel jumps back and forth between the present, when Rita is trying to solve the case of the murdered woman, and the past, when Rita was a young girl living with her grandmother on the reservation. We learn more about when Rita first discovered her gift, and how her grandmother taught her to have a healthy respect for the spirits of the dead.

If you listen to audiobooks, this one would be a great one to pick up in that format. The audiobook is narrated by Lakota Mohawk actress Charley Flyte, who plays Aunt Sue on Rutherford Falls. She does an excellent job of capturing Rita’s state of mind as she searches for the murderer and gets herself into some dangerous situations.

A year ago, Sabriel by Garth Nix celebrated its 25th birthday. When I first read the novel as a teenager, I was swept away to another world where the dead didn’t always stay dead. Wild magical creatures roamed the dark places of the world. And only one young woman had the power to save the land.

Fantasy novels have always been my first love. I poured over library catalogs looking for more stories set in other worlds full of things like dragons, elves, fairies, talking cats, or whatever other fantastical creatures the author imagined. But most of the fantasy novels that I read featured stories of young men finding the hidden power within themselves. They always reluctantly accepted that power, eventually slaying the bad guy and saving the world.

But Sabriel’s story was different. She grew up knowing she would one day take up her father’s mantle and become the Abhorsen, the one who kept the dead down. There were no secret powers to discover or reluctant acceptance of her own ability. Sabriel studied. She ground out her training day after day, knowing that she must be ready when the time came. She was a woman who knew that there would be no magical power to save her if she had no idea how to use it in the first place.

Eventually, her father goes missing, and Sabriel must venture across the wall into the Old Kingdom and search for her father in a land she hasn’t been in since her childhood. Even with all of her preparedness, she still has so much to learn about fighting necromancers and slaying the undead.

I loved all of the Old Kingdom series, which now has expanded to six books and a couple short stories. But Sabriel will always be my favorite. There’s just something about her practical approach to her career as an Abhorsen that I deeply connect with, and now that I’m older, I have begun viewing her in new ways. Sometimes rereading a favorite from your childhood can be disappointing. But other times, you find something new that is just as profound and meaningful as when you first read it.

When journalist Alan Maimon was moving back home to the United States after many years reporting in Berlin, Germany, he decided to try to gain experience by reporting from a lesser known part of the country, a place where he felt like he was reporting in a foreign country. That’s how he found Hazard, Kentucky.

Through his reporting, Maimon touches on some of the major issues that Eastern Kentucky faces, like coal companies denying disability benefits for miners with black lung disease, the opioid crisis, mountaintop removal, and lack of quality healthcare. Other journalists have written entire books on each of these topics, but Maimon does a good job providing readers with an introduction to these complex issues.

Miamon centers his experience on getting to know the people of Eastern Kentucky, using himself as a sort of a guide for people outside the region. As he learns more about Hazard, so do his readers. But he did receive pushback from the people of Hazard, and they ended up holding a sort of town hall where people from the community could respond to his book. After listening to the people of Hazard, he changed the paperback based on their feedback to include many of the grassroots organizations fighting for change in the region.

I recommend this for folks outside of Appalachia who are looking to get to know the region. For more Appalachian Literature recommendations, check out “15 Books to Read Instead of Hillbilly Elegy” and “15 More Books to Read Instead of Hillbilly Elegy.”