Hillerman's Memoir Doesn't Disappoint

 

Tony Hillerman. Seldom Disappointed: A Memoir (2001) Hillerman is one of my favourite writers. His police procedurals set in Navajo country integrate plot, character and setting better than most fictions. Because of them, I want to visit that part of America, but I doubt I will make it there.
     This memoir begins with his childhood on a hardscrabble farm in Oklahoma, where his mother taught him to have low expectations, because then he would be seldom disappointed. But the dominant attitude here is gratitude for all the breaks that came his way: his luck in surviving the war, benefitting from the GI Bill, learning how to tell a story as reporter, and a happy marriage and family life. The war damaged him both physically and psychologically, damage that he plays down. But that damage also encouraged his gift of imaginative empathy. The narrator of the novels has the same voice as the narrator of this memoir. I like this man.
     Footnote: Hillerman’s memories of his war add to its history in the best way: the point of view of those that actually fought it.
     Recommended. ****