Engage with your community and discover more about Oklahoma author Tony Hillerman.
On March 15, 2025, PLS, in partnership with the Friends of Library in Oklahoma (FOLIO), will celebrate Tony Hillerman with a Oklahoma Literary Site Dedication at the Shawnee Public Library.
Ignite your civic engagement and learn more about topics that are important in your community. Become engaged and informed by connecting with Anne Hillerman, renowned author and daughter of Oklahoma author Tony Hillerman.
Mr. Hillerman, an award-winning journalist, non-fiction author and novelist, was born in Sacred Heart, Oklahoma. He will be celebrated with the dedication of a Literary Landmark placed in the Shawnee Public Library. The honor is sponsored by the Friends of Libraries in Oklahoma. Sites are dedicated to a deceased literary figure, author, or his or her work. This event is designed for all ages.
Scroll down for biography, bibliography, and more!
Biography
Tony Hillerman was born May 27, 1925 in south Pottawatomie County, in the Catholic mission settlement of Sacred Heart. His father, August Alfred Hillerman, was a shopkeeper and farmer; his mother was Lucy Grove. Grandparents were emigrants from Germany and England. He attended St. Mary’s Academy, a mission school in Sacred Heart, originally established to educate girls from the Potawatomi Tribe. As a child growing up with Indians, he remembered, “...you did not have an ‘us and them.’” He graduated from Konawa High School in 1942, attended Oklahoma A. & M. for one semester, then worked on the family farm until he was eligible to enlist in the Army in May of 1943.
Tony served as a mortarman with the 103rd Infantry Division, Charley Company, in the European theater. During a patrol sent across a mine field, he was severely wounded by shrapnel and narrowly escaped losing his sight. He was subsequently honored with the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.
Shortly after his discharge, he encountered Navajo ceremonial culture when he traveled to New Mexico to deliver oil field equipment. He was impressed by the lengthy ceremony, The Enemy Way, for two Navajo Marines. Its purpose was to rid them of the trauma of war and restore a sense of personal harmony with the earth and Navajo society. He thought all veterans could benefit from such a reintegration process.
During his Army service, Tony’s mother had shared some of his letters with a reporter who later complimented him for his style and urged him to consider a career in journalism. He went back to college on the G.I. Bill, to complete his undergraduate degree at the University of Oklahoma, with a major in journalism. He wrote articles for and eventually became editor of a campus magazine, Covered Wagon. At OU, he met his wife, Marie Elizabeth Unzner, a native of Shawnee. They were married in 1948 at St. Benedict’s Catholic Church in Shawnee. The couple had one child, Anne Hillerman, and adopted five others.
After graduating in 1948, Hillerman began his journalism career as a police reporter for the Borger News-Herald in Borger, Texas. There he was introduced to the investigative procedures that became so central in his novels. He later said the county sheriff was a model for one of his main Navajo characters, Joe Leaphorn. He went on to work for two Lawton, Oklahoma newspapers and United Press International in Oklahoma City. He was transferred to head the bureau in Santa Fe and later became a political reporter and editor of The New Mexican.
A story supporting a project proposed by the president of the University of New Mexico led to a part-time job as the president’s special assistant, while he took courses toward an MA in English. His essays as a graduate student were published during this time, collected in The Great Taos Bank Robbery (1973). Upon receiving his MA, he became part of the UNM’s Journalism faculty. In 1987, he stepped away from a full-time position to become a guest lecturer.
As an academic, freed from the deadlines of newspaper reporting, he completed a first novel, The Blessing Way in 1969. He sent it to the agent who advised to get rid of all the “Indian stuff.” While that advice reflected attitudes toward Indian protagonists and culture in the fiction of the 1960s, Tony was convinced that the Indian material was the best part of his novel. So he sent the manuscript to the mystery editor at Harper & Row (later HarperCollins) and it was published in 1970. He followed with seven Navajo mysteries while on the faculty at UNM, featuring Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, both tribal police officers.
Dance Hall of the Dead (1973), his second novel, won the Edgar Award as the best mystery of the year. Subsequent novels sold well, but remained on the mystery shelves in bookstores, until his “breakout novel,” A Thief of Time (1988), was listed as a “notable book” by the New York Times. It turned out that Tony had not only developed a following among mystery fans, but other readers were attracted by the careful treatment of Navajo culture and his vivid descriptions of southwestern landscape.
Much as a film producer might, Tony traveled to locations he planned to use in his novels, making sure he got the topography and the feel of the land just right. Later, in 1991, he teamed with his brother, Barney, to produce a carefully constructed “coffee table” book, Hillerman Country. Barney’s beautiful photographs set up Tony’s explanations of different features’ mythic and historical significance.
After retiring to devote more time to his novels, Tony published eleven more Leaphorn/Chee police procedurals, the last in 2006. He also published four non-Navajo novels, including two children’s books. Other publications include a memoir, Seldom Disappointed (2001), and nonfiction projects, some with photographers, resulting in eight books celebrating the beauty of the Southwest.
More awards followed: three Anthony Awards, the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award, the Nero Award for Coyote Waits (1990), three Macavity Awards, the Agatha Award for his memoir, two Spur Awards, given by the Western Writers of America, and the Agatha Malice Domestic Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2002. The University of New Mexico awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1990.
Four studies of Tony Hillerman’s life and work have been published, including the authoritative biography by James McGrath Morris (OU Press, 2021). Four picture books of “Tony Hillerman’s Landscapes” have been published, with maps, indicating his continuing importance in encouraging interest and tourism in the Four Corners area of New Mexico. Four films have been made from his novels and a television series, Dark Winds, began in 2022.
At the time of his death in 2008, Tony Hillerman had published 18 novels in the Navajo mystery series. His daughter, Anne Hillerman, has continued the series, publishing nine more, the latest, The Lost Birds (2024). Continuing with Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, she brings a female tribal officer to the foreground, Bernadette Manuelito. Her novels enlarge on the important roles women play in tribal life.
Curated Dr. William Hagen, Emeritus Professor of English, Oklahoma Baptist University
Selected Works
Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee mysteries
The Blessing Way (1970)—A Navajo witch, an anthropologist and others mix in Chaco Canyon. What began as a minor figure, Tribal Officer Joe Leaphorn, develops into a necessary character.
Dance Hall of the Dead (1973)—Winner of the 1974 Edgar Award as the best mystery of the year, in which Leaphorn emerges at the protagonist, initially searching for two lost boys, encountering Zuni pueblo culture.
People of Darkness (1980)—Introducing Jim Chee, a younger, more traditional Navajo officer, puzzled by white culture, confronting a professional assassin.
The Dark Wind (1982)—Jim Chee takes the lead in tackling a series of seemingly unconnected events: a plane crash, a missing shipment of cocaine, an attack on a windmill, and a corpse scalped of hand and sole prints. This and other Hillerman plots recently adapted for a television series, Dark Winds.
A Thief of Time (1988)—Two bodies amidst stolen goods in an ancient burial ground, a reputed witch in the San Juan River Canyon, confront Leaphorn and Chee in this novel which widened Hillerman’s readership when it was featured in general best-seller lists.
Talking God (1989)—An elaborate Navajo ceremony and the opening of a Smithsonian exhibit, containing religious items of Indian and Aztec culture bookend this thriller in which political assassinations complicate efforts to return sacred artifacts to their original locations.
Sacred Clowns (1993)—Two deaths, a boarding school shop teacher and a Hopi ceremonial dancer, in widely separated locations, possibly connected through a missing schoolboy. Different views of justice and marriage customs, Anglo vs. Navajo, enrich the outcome.
The Shape Shifter (2006)—A cold case of a valuable missing Navajo rug and a murderer thought dead, draw a retired Joe Leaphorn back into into investigative mode in this last mystery.
Other Notable Titles
The Great Taos Bank Robbery (1973)—A delightful collection of nonfiction essays, written when Tony was a graduate student at the University of New Mexico in the 1960s.
The Fly on the Wall (1971)—Based on his experiences as a political reporter in Oklahoma and elsewhere, Hillerman creates a reporter who stumbles onto dangerous ground in investigating official corruption.
Hillerman Country: A Journey Through the Southwest (1991)—Vivid color photographs by his brother, Barney, and a text by Tony explore the geological, historical, and mythic significance of different sites. A beautiful coffee table book for the mystery fan and any lover of Southwestern Indian country.
Seldom Disappointed (2001)—A delightful memoir of a very eventful life, full of humor and insight.
About Tony Hillerman
Morris, James McGrath. Tony Hillerman: A Life (2021)—The most authoritative biography.
Hillerman, Tony & Ernie Bulow. Talking Mysteries (2004)—A personal account of a friendship, an article by Tony about his career as an author and a long interview.
Greenberg, Martin, editor, with Tony Hillerman. The Tony Hillerman Companion (1994)-- A map, essays, plot summaries, timelines, and an interview in this “Comprehensive Guide.”
The Tony Hillerman Portal: https://ehillerman.unm.edu/home#sthash.tHnGHqKd.dpbs Manuscript drafts, interviews, articles and essays in the University of New Mexico collection.
