LAND OF ECHOES

A BookSense Pick for 2004! “Best of 2004" pick by Rocky Mountain News! "Hecht is a master . . . Land of Echoes is more than a simple supernatural mystery. It is an exploration of the psyche and the struggle of people and spirits caught between worlds . . . Land of Echoes resonates. The writing is poetic in a way that is sure to raise gooseflesh." - Rocky Mountain News "Hecht is so good at making his ghosts and demons believable that Land of Echoes quickly caught me up in its exciting story. . . . In the end, the book is so well-balanced and beautifully written that you probably won't realize you've been reading a ghost story." - Chicago Tribune

Now available in hardcover, paperback, and audiobook! In the second book of the Cree Black series, Cree is called to investigate a fascinating case unfolding in the vast high desert of New Mexico. When Tommy Keeday, a student at a boarding school for gifted Navajo teens, is suddenly seized by a frightening and violent illness, his family believes he is possessed by the hostile spirit of a dead ancestor. In desperation, principal Julieta McCarty calls on Psi Research Associates of Seattle for help.

Is Tommy Keeday just a sensitive teenager, seeking attention by acting out bizarre symptoms, or is he suffering from an exotic brain disorder? Or is there truth in the Navajo legends of witches, Skinwalkers, and malevolent ghosts? As the terrifying symptoms worsen and Tommy’s resistance wanes, it becomes clear that Cree and her colleagues are in a race against time. Their investigation takes them back to Julieta McCarty’s buried past and to crucial moments in the history of the Navajo people, and pits them against present-day mining interests with secrets they’ll kill to keep hidden.

Land of Echoes is at once a thrillingly plausible mystery, a passionate love story, and a thoughtful exploration of Navajo culture and identity in modern America.

I’ve always been fascinated with the Navajo and other Native American tribes of the Southwest, especially their spiritual and supernatural traditions. The landscape there is breath-taking, dry, unforgiving, exhilarating, full of earth spirits; writing Land of Echoes gave me an excuse to immerse myself in the place, the people, the history there. As with City of Masks, I began the book on the scene, in a little room attached to the barn of my friends on the Navajo rez. A year later, I finished the book in that same room.

The more I read and the more time I spent with my Navajo friends, the more I realized how much my outlook – and Cree’s -- has in common with their traditional world views, and how many aspects of Navajo healing traditions resemble modern psychotherapy. Cree, with one foot in the world of science and one in the world of mysticism, proved to be the perfect intermediary between traditions.

The book concerns a case of possession, but it is not at all the sort popularized by movies like The Exorcist. Judeo-Christian cosmology is unusual in that it looks at possession as the action of a purely evil, demonic being; most spiritual traditions throughout the world believe the possessing entity is just as likely to be neutral or even benign. This is certainly a suspenseful story, but it is intended also to be moving, compelling, thought-provoking. After all, what does it mean to be “possessed”? Where is the dividing line between obsession and possession? In one sense, aren’t we all “possessed” by our memories, our loves, our buried hopes, and our fears?

As I mention in the book’s afterword, the particulars of Tommy Keeday’s possession are based on true incidents in Navajo literature and on the fascinating case of Anna Winsor, which was painstakingly documented by her physician, Dr. Barrows, between the onset of symptoms in 1860 and her death in 1873.

More praise for Land of Echoes

“Daniel Hecht scores again in a series that is absorbing, lyrical, and altogether frightening. His exploration of the supernatural, the Navajo culture, and the beauty of the New Mexican desert all come together in a story that is as enthralling as it is evocative . . .” – New Mystery Reader

"Beautifully written, Land of Echoes is a mystery in many senses of the word. It is also a story about love, its heartbreaking consequences, and ultimate triumphs." - BookSense 76