From Publishers Weekly
After Billy Keene sees a dead body and a suitcase fall from the sky in rural New Mexico, he and his hunting buddy Will Striker, both of them half-Cherokee, decide to keep the $850,000 they find in the suitcase?and so begins Owens's solemn and surely told third Native American crime thriller (after Bone Game, 1994). Immediately, the two friends are attacked from above by a helicopter, which they shoot down in a brief battle. They try to hide the money along with any evidence of the shoot-out, but soon the local sheriff informs them of an impending investigation. Their task grows even more difficult when Billy begins a romance with a beautiful, mysterious Native American woman, and when Billy's elderly grandfather?who attempts to call on ancient Native American forces to extricate the friends from their predicament?disappears from the family ranch. After a local drug dealer comes calling to recover the cash, a series of violent confrontations erupts. Owens handles Billy and Will's romantic difficulties with compassion, adding resonance to a well-wrought thriller capped by a twist-filled climax.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Owens (Bone Game, LJ 9/1/94) mines a rich vein of Native American lore and landscape in this buddy thriller about two half-Cherokee ranchers in New Mexico. As dried up as their land, Will and Billy support themselves by rounding up cattle for other ranchers. When they conspire to divide up a dead man's million dollars, they set evil forces in motion that propel them into the dark Cherokee Nightland, ,from which only Will emerges. Most of the flashbacks are skillfully woven into the fabric of the narrative, but when they're not the pace sags. Owens, of Choctaw-Cherokee-Irish descent, delivers multidimensional characters, quirky humor, and a lyrical sensitivity to Cherokee tradition that hovers on myth. A unique combination of literary style, strong story, and American Indian culture makes Nightland an appealing addition to fiction collections.?Molly Gorman, San Marino, Cal.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
