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Authors: Land of Echoes
The phenomenon of possession figures in all the world's religions and superstitions and has close parallels in a number of
modern medical diagnoses.
The fictional case of Tommy Keeday is a composite drawn from true incidents in Navajo historical literature and from the fascinating,
disturbing case of Anna Winsor, which was painstakingly detailed by her physician, Dr. Barrows, between the onset of symptoms
in 1860 and her death in 1873. Anna was seized with fits and delirium and then settled into a troubled state in which she
experienced her spine as her right arm and her neck as her shoulder; she neither recognized nor retained conscious control
of her actual arm. The right arm seemed possessed of a separate, self-aware consciousness of its own and often functioned
independently—writing, signing, gesturing—when she was asleep. She feared the alien thing attached to her body and sometimes
attacked it in attempts to drive it away. She also spoke in other voices and accents, made prescient pronouncements, and assumed
a wide variety of personalities.
Dr. Barrows's original journal is hard to come by, but an account of Anna Winsor's thirteen-year struggle (along with many
other cases) can be found in F. W. H. Myers's
Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death,
originally published in 1903, reprinted in 2001 by Hampton Roads Publishing.
The European literature on possession, based largely on Judeo-Christian cosmology, is unusual in that it supposes a purely
evil or demonic agent in possession. The great majority of spiritual traditions throughout the world take a broader view,
in which the invading entity is just as likely to be neutral or even benign, and include intentional possession among the
skills required of practitioners of medical and mystical arts.
I owe a great deal to many people who contributed their support and knowledge to the writing of this book.
First and foremost, I am grateful to my dear friends in the Navajo Nation, Bob Kirk, Ruth Storer, and Ernest Kirk, for sharing
their homes and stories, for reviewing drafts, and for setting me straight on many issues. I also owe gratitude to Tamara
Martin for our spectacular horse rides and for her grace and generosity, and to Dr. Jim Sielski for advising me about medical
administration on the rez. Thanks, too, to Herbert Benally of Dinê College—Shiprock; to Dr. Daniel McLaughlin of Dinê College-Tsaile;
to Dee McCloskey, regional director of NCASC; and to the many others who treated me so kindly during my visits to Dinetah.
Please forgive my presumptions, errors, and license.
Special thanks are due John Engles and the Pittsburg and Midland Coal Mining Company, for graciously touring me through P&M's
astounding McKinley Mine. Readers should know that P&M's operations in no way resemble the reprehensible practices of the
fictional McCarty mine depicted in this book.
Thank you to my wise advance readers, Willow Hecht, Amie Hecht, Stella Hovis, Jean Cannon, Ruth Storer, and Francette Cerulli,
whose comments greatly improved this book.
My undying gratitude goes to Karen Rinaldi, Lara Carrigan, Greg Villepique, and Amanda Katz, for being such terrific people
to work with, and to my agent, Nicole Aragi.
Finally, once again, thanks to Christine Klaine for coming to me with her wildly improbable notion of writing a fifty-book
series of serious supernatural mystery novels!
Daniel Hecht was a professional guitarist for twenty years. In 1989, he retired from musical performance to take up writing,
and he received an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1992. He is the author of three previous novels:
Skull Session, The Babel Effect,
and
City of Masks,
which introduced Cree Black.
Masks,
which introduced Cree Black.
Copyright © 2004 by Daniel Hecht and Christine Klaine
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from
the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in cntical articles or reviews.
For information address Bloomsbury Publishing, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Published by Bloomsbury Publishing, New York and London
Distributed to the trade by Holtzbrinck Publishers
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Hecht, Daniel.
Land of echoes : a Cree Black novel / Daniel Hecht.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-59691-803-0
1. Parapsychologists-Fiction. 2. Women school principals—Fiction. 3. Spirit possession-Fiction. 4. Indian students-Fiction. 5. Seattle (Wash.)-Fiction. 6. Navajo Indians—Fiction. 7. New Mexico-Fiction.
I. Title.
PS3558.E284L35 2004
813'.54-dc22
2003017983
First published in hardcover by Bloomsbury Publishing in 2004 This paperback edition published in 2005
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