WILD PENANCE, Ault's 4th Book, Answers Many of Readers' Questions About Early Life of Jamaica Wild

Readers of Sandi Ault’s first three books in her Wild Mystery Series have described Jamaica Wild as intelligent, vulnerable, and “painfully aware of her shortcomings.” Ault’s portrayal of this fictional character, a young woman working as a BLM Resource Protection Agent, has generated empathy among readers, but also has raised questions.

The fourth book in the series, WILD PENANCE, scheduled by Berkley Prime Crime for release next month, February 20th, answers a lot of those questions; answers that will generate a fuller understanding of the character, and an urge to reread the first three books in the series.

The framework for the story line in WILD PENANCE is the Los Penitentes, a religious group that has been a part of the Rio Grande region of the southwest since the Spanish arrived in the1500s. As an author’s note in the book, Sandi Ault explains her approach.

“I have featured some of what is known, some of what is written, some of what is rumored, some of what I have been told, a little of what I have seen, and a healthy dose of what I have imagined.”

Reading a Time Magazine article from 1936, entitled “Religion: Blood in New Mexico,” shows how frighteningly accurate Sandi Ault has portrayed a religious group that is a heterodoxy to the tenets of the Catholic Church.

The Los Penitentes are a secretive group that practice extreme rituals, including “re-enactments of the Crucifixion and self-flagellation as penance.” But more than a story about a religious cult, this book is a story about Jamaica Wild. It is the story of her penance.

Against this background, in what Sandi Ault describes as a prequel, readers will learn why Jamaica Wild, a native of the plains of Kansas, made the choice to work alone in rugged mountains.

They will learn why she wanted to live by herself in a remote cabin without modern connections to the outside world. And they will learn why hiding beneath the quilts and blankets of her bed gives her a feeling of safety and comfort.

In WILD PENANCE, as Jamaica struggles to ultimately solve the mystery as to why her natural curiosity about the Los Penitentes turned into a threat to her life, readers will follow her through her own penance of “forgiveness,” and discover the roots that become the anchors of her life.

After Jamaica suffers an accident, Kerry Reed comes to her aid, a meeting that signals the beginning of a romantic relationship. A helping had to a stranger leads to her friendship with Mama Anna Santana, the Pueblo medicine woman, from whom Jamaica begins to learn the “Indun way” of life. And readers will learn how Jamaica becomes the foster mother of an orphaned wolf cub, the one she named Mountain.

As is the thought expressed by W. H. Auden in his poem on Herman Melville⎯beyond the terror of life comes the knowledge that goodness exists⎯so is the thought left after reading WILD PENANCE. The story begins with Jamaica Wild witnessing a horrible human incident. It ends with a small, warm bundle of fur snuggled beside her as she sings a song of sheer joy.

Margaret Coel Creates Voice for Arapahos As Tony Hillerman Did for Navajos

The hole created in my reading world by the death of Tony Hillerman has been filled with the discovery of Margaret Coel, author of the Wind River Mystery Series.

The author, a Colorado native, now living in Boulder, has built her series around the Northern Arapahos, a Native American tribe that shares Wyoming’s Wind River Reservation, with the Eastern Shoshones.

I spent a small part of two summers in The Wind River Reservation area. The memories created by those visits are still vivid. This area of Wyoming is both beautiful and barren; white-water canyons, filled with lush growth, and arid desert, spotted with sere vegetation.


Seen in the cold luminance of a full moon, the land takes on an unworldly aura of darkness and shadows. at dawn, it comes alive with color when painted by the rising sun. At high noon, the sun gives the desert areas a stark washed-out sameness where the only change in scenery comes when looking upward, if there are clouds in the sky.

When I saw the area, it was easy to understand why the Eastern Shoshones, when given a choice by the US government in 1868, selected as their permanent home the land that included their traditional wintering and hunting grounds.

The Shoshones, like many Native Americans, held the traditional believe of there being a harmonious connection among all things of creation, past, present, and future. It was very easy to understand why this belief existed after experiencing this part of the world. It spoke to that fractional portion of Native American blood that runs through my veins.

After deeding the land in Wyoming to the Shoshones, the US government later moved a number of Northern Arapahos from Colorado to the Wind River Reservation, saying the move was a temporary arrangement, but one that became permanent.

The Shoshones and Arapahos, which had been traditional enemies, made peace with each other before the Shoshones made peace with the federal government. The Shoshones learned early on that it was better to fight the government with white man’s law rather than with traditional weapons.

Nearly 70 years after being given title to the reservation, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Shoshones were due compensation for land taken away by the federal government. Today, the Shoshones live in the western part of the reservation, a region closer to the mountains, while the Arapahos occupy the more open plains of the eastern half, the geographical setting for Margaret Coel’s Wind River Mystery Series.

Having so far read three books in the series, my memory tells me Coel has done an excellent job of describing the land of the Arapahos. Reading her words and phrases used to describe the novels’ settings was like flipping through an album of photos from summers past.

Beyond her descriptions of the landscape, Coel’s books are geographically accurate as to town names and locations, and places. St. Francis Mission is a big part of the on-going story line, and while the name in the series is fictional, its depiction is based on an existing mission, St. Stephens, which has a continuous history almost as old as the reservation itself.

That is the packaging for the Wind River Mysteries. What is the product inside? The series is built around two main protagonists, Vicky Holden, a lawyer, and Father John O'Malley, head priest St. Francis Mission. Both are considered edge people, living their lives partially in the white man’s world and partially within the Native American world of the reservation.

Holden is an Arapaho who escaped her marriage to an alcoholic and abusive husband, left the reservation, became a lawyer, and joined the staff of a Denver firm. After ten years⎯the two children from her marriage now adults⎯she returned to the reservation, determined to use white man’s laws to fight for the rights of Native Americans.

Father O’Malley, an Irishman from Boston, arrived at the remote Native American mission after his career as a Jesuit teacher took a left turn through the dark valley of alcoholism, ending with a year in rehab. Sent to Wyoming as penance for his sins, Father John found not the career he once pursued, but the home he needed.

This is the basic background for a series of novels built around the basic plot of two amateur sleuths, Vicky and Father John, working to solve mysteries in which they became involved through events in their professional lives and their involvement in community activities.

One thread woven into the fabric of the stories is the relationship between Father John and Vicky. They are kept apart romantically by the priest’s commitment to the church and his vows of celibacy. However, there is a bond of friendship and understanding that leads them to depend on each other for support while skirting moments of romantic entanglement.

As seems to the nature of my reading habits, I jumped into the middle of this series, which now includes 15 books. I began reading with the fifth book in the series, THE LOST BIRD (1999) and have read two others, THE SHADOW DANCER (2002), and WIFE OF MOON (2004).

The author states on her Website that each book “is written to stand alone, so don’t worry about diving right in wherever you would like.” I was left to wonder about that statement after a major development occurred in THE SHADOW DANCER. It would have left me a bit baffled had I not read the three books in the order I did.

This is always the chance that readers like me take when they begin a new series. I am not patient enough to start at the beginning. I grab a book and start reading, disregarding its place in the series. At times, this has led me to an “ah, ha” moment, and the rereading of a previous book, knowing that I would now “get it;” understand what was going on previously.

I began by saying Margaret Coel filled the void left by Tony Hillerman. It’s like finally having to discard an old comfortable pair of house slippers and break in a new pair. There’s much for me to like about Margaret Coel’s writing, but it will take a while before the new slippers feel exactly like the old pair. But with a dozen more books to read in the Wind River series, I am looking forward to old slipper comfort and enjoyment.