{"id":18736,"date":"2020-12-24T10:26:28","date_gmt":"2020-12-24T15:26:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=18736"},"modified":"2020-12-24T10:26:28","modified_gmt":"2020-12-24T15:26:28","slug":"winter-counts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2020\/12\/24\/winter-counts\/","title":{"rendered":"In \u2018Winter Counts,\u2019 A Native Detective-Vigilante Rights Wrongs On His Reservation"},"content":{"rendered":"

When residents of the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota feel that villains have slipped through the cracks of law enforcement justice, they call Virgil Wounded Horse to dish out violent vigilante retribution.<\/p>\n

In David Heska Wanbli Weiden\u2019s novel \u201cWinter Counts,\u201d<\/a> a tribal official hires Virgil to investigate who is smuggling heroin into the reservation and put a stop to it. Virgil hesitates to take the job \u2026 until his teenage nephew, whom he\u2019s raising as his own son, overdoses. Then Virgil sets off with a vengeance.<\/p>\n

\"David<\/a>
David Heska Wanbli Weiden (Photo courtesy of the author)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Life on this reservation is grim\u2014few jobs, poverty, racism, sexual assault, drinking, drugs, corruption, folks dying too young. It\u2019s an uphill battle for those working to improve the community, like Virgil, in his brutal way, or Virgil\u2019s off-again-on-again girlfriend Marie Short Bear, who\u2019s torn between her desire to help people on the reservation and an opportunity to leave to become a doctor.<\/p>\n

Weiden, a Denver lawyer and professor who\u2019s an enrolled citizen of the Sicangu Lakota, draws on his own background to root his crime thriller in contemporary indigenous lived reality. His mother grew up on the Rosebud Indian Reservation.<\/a> And the book is illuminating on the injustices left by legal holes between local indigenous authority and federal law enforcement, which often ignores the reservation.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a compelling beginning, and a promising milieu in which to set what looks to be a series. But unfortunately, many of the novel\u2019s characters don\u2019t develop much beyond pulp stereotypes\u2014the vigilante detective, the girlfriend with a heart of gold, the troubled teen who gets in over his head. Virgil\u2019s investigation leads him to uncover a conspiracy\u2014but the twist, when it arrives, feels too easily revealed as one villain confesses all.<\/p>\n

\u201cWinter Counts\u201d by David Heska Wanbli Weiden (Ecco)<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\n

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, (hopefully) weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting. (All content \u00a9Greg Cook 2020 or the respective creators.)<\/em><\/p>\n

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\""Winter<\/a>
“Winter Counts” by David Heska Wanbli Weiden (Ecco)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When residents of the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota feel that villains have slipped through the cracks of law enforcement justice, they call Virgil Wounded Horse to dish out violent vigilante retribution. In David Heska Wanbli Weiden\u2019s novel \u201cWinter Counts,\u201d a tribal official hires Virgil to investigate who is smuggling heroin into the reservation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18747,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18736"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18736"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18752,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18736\/revisions\/18752"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}