DAVID HESKA WANBLI WEIDEN chats with Craig Sisterson about WINTER COUNTS, his character Virgil Wounded Horse, the Rosebud Native American Reservation, and why he receives the grand total of $1.29/quarter in rent for his land from cattle farmers.
Winter Counts: If you have a problem, if no one else can help, there’s one person you can turn to. Virgil Wounded Horse is the local enforcer on the Rosebud Native American Reservation in South Dakota. When justice is denied by the American legal system or the tribal council, Virgil is hired to deliver his own punishment, the kind that’s hard to forget. But when heroin makes its way onto the reservation and finds Virgil’s nephew, his vigilantism becomes personal. Enlisting the help of his ex-girlfriend, he sets out to learn where the drugs are coming from, and how to make them stop.
Following a lead to Denver, they find that drug cartels are rapidly expanding and forming new and terrifying alliances. And back on the reservation, a new tribal council initiative raises uncomfortable questions about money and power. As Virgil starts to link the pieces together, he must face his own demons and reclaim his Native identity - but being a Native American in the twenty-first century comes at an incredible cost.
David Heska Wanbli Weiden, an enrolled citizen of the Sicangu Lakota nation, is the author of the novel Winter Counts, winner of the Anthony, Thriller, Barry, Lefty, Macavity, Spur, and Tillie Olsen Awards. The novel was also nominated for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, the Shamus and Dashiell Hammett Prize.
Weiden was a MacDowell Fellow, a Tin House Scholar, and was awarded the PEN/America Writing for Justice Fellowship. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts, and teaches writing for the MFA program at Regis University. He's Professor of Native American Studies at Metropolitan State University of Denver, and lives in Colorado with his family. Learn more at DavidWeiden.com.
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Produced by Junkyard Dog
Music courtesy of Southgate and Leigh
Crime Time
Craig Sisterson is the author of SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME: The Pocket Essential Guide to the Crime Fiction, Film & TV of Australia and New Zealand. He founded the Ngaio Marsh Awards in his native New Zealand and is a contributor to several publications and magazines.
Produced by Junkyard Dog
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