Hell and Back by Craig Johnson
Craig Johnson consistently, intelligently and with customary dry humor, melds literary fiction with western crime fiction as Sheriff Walt Longmire rides the Wyoming High Plains range in the pickup truck he calls “Silver Bullet,” delivering justice.
Hell and Back (Viking), his 18th novel in the Longmire series, opens with a dazed, amnesia-stricken Walt lying flat on his back in the middle of a snow-covered, two-lane road. Around his neck is a lightweight red scarf he last saw on the ghostly apparition of a deceased and still missing girl named Jeannie One Moon. Higher on the same hill is an arch proclaiming “Fort Pratt Industrial Indian Boarding School,” but nothing remains of the school except a massive, metal bell. The befuddled sheriff is somewhere close to Montana’s border with Canada, many miles and several hours from his jurisdiction in Absaroka County. He is wounded, bleeding from his side and barely conscious with a great-horned owl staring down at him. His truck has been smashed into a snow bank by a 5-ton snowplow.
Walt is down a rabbit hole in a netherworld where time is permanently suspended at 8:17 PM and signs and symbols abound. The ghost town ahead is populated with dead souls and a handful of living, most of whom are pursuing him. The number 31 is seen everywhere and is the only habitable room in the Baker Hotel.
It’s up to Sheriff Longmire to remember who he is, why he drove there and which beings are benevolent or malevolent, whether among the living or dead. He is in for the fight of his life. “Stay calm, have courage and wait for signs” has never been more meaningful.
A CONTINUATION OF DAUGHTER OF THE MORNING STAR (VIKING)
Hell and Back could rightfully be considered the second half of the novel which began with Daughter of the Morning Star. The author has discussed the connection between the two books, and I suggest fans at least skim through it to refresh their memories before diving into Hell and Back.
It is a surreal departure for a Craig Johnson plot to delve so deeply into the supernatural otherworld and to have two Longmire books linked so closely within the same time frame. Daughter of the Morning Star centers on the shocking plight of Indigenous women who are subjected to violence and sexual abuse. They number among missing and murdered at disproportionately higher rates than non-native women. Jeannie One Moon was last seen in the company of known White Supremacists. Walt Longmire hears her spirit voice’s lamentations. Her family fears she was pulled into the legendary Éveohtsé-heómėse; the wandering lost Cheyenne equivalent of a Boogeyman who hungers for the living and will remain in this limbo until her body is found.
Before her father, Jimmy Lane, is arrested for avenging her death, he hands Walt a postcard with the lettering, “Fort Pratt and Industrial Indian Boarding School” and the number 31 circled on the back and on the front, a slightly blurred sepia-toned photograph of 30 young native boys in uniforms and caps with one smaller boy in the foreground.
The last page of Daughter of the Morning Star ends with Walt’s statements, ‘I guess I’ve got a good seven hours of driving ahead of me, and ‘If I get going, I should be there sometime around daybreak.’ Hell and Back clearly resumes that story.
QUESTIONS OF GOOD AND EVIL ARISE
Walt hovers for two days between life and death, wandering in and out of recurring visions among the long dead, and manages to intervene to change the course of history and right a century-old wrong. He must thwart living sworn enemies and an escaped convict wielding shotguns, side arms and lethal knives, as well as confront the embodiment of a legendary Cheyenne evil spirit on par with J.K. Rowling’s Voldemort while not knowing if he, Walt, is already dead.
The cavalry arrives in the form of Henry Standing Bear, aka “The Cheyenne Nation,” his canine companion “Dog,” Undersheriff and ladylove Vic Moretti and the pull of the vague remembrance of his brilliant attorney daughter, Cady, and her precious two-year-old daughter, his only grandchild, as well as good spirits who have passed before. Discerning which force is good and which is evil may be the biggest challenge in the career and life of this human — and not superhero — Wyoming sheriff.
JOHNSON ADDRESSES NATIVE HISTORY AND GENOCIDE
Craig Johnson specifically puts Walt Longmire in situations that address social injustices. He has stated, “I tend to refer to it as the ‘Burr-Under-the-Saddle-Blanket School of Literature. That burr under the saddle blanket is there, I can feel it and the horse can feel it, neither of us like it.”
A component of Hell and Back is the exposure of the institutionalized cultural genocide in the form of government or church-sponsored Indian Boarding Schools that endured for nearly a century. In 1879 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Brigadier General Richard Henry Pratt established and became the superintendent of the first off-reservation boarding school for Native Americans, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Prior to this, beginning in the 1860s, native children were educated in schools on their home reservations. Pratt’s goal was Americanization or civilization by cultural assimilation with the motto, “Kill the Indian to save the man.” Eventually, there were over 400 Indian Boarding Schools in the west, and the Carlisle School in Pennsylvania which closed in 1918. Hundreds of thousands of Native American children were removed, sometimes forcibly, from their homes and tribes.
Upon arrival at the schools, their hair was cut and their cherished heritage possessions and native dress were seized and swapped for uniforms provided. Then the children were renamed with European first and last names. They were forbidden to speak their tribal languages, forced to speak the unfamiliar sounding English language and punished if they disobeyed. They were stripped of traditions including familiar foods, converted to Christianity and taught history from the white man’s perspective.
In the better schools, they were given a sound education grounded in reading, writing and arithmetic and taught trades. However, as federal funding diminished and the schools needed to be self-sufficient, less time was spent on formal education. However, the schools were permitted to “lend out” the boys as laborers or field hands, and girls were sent to private homes to work as kitchen helpers, laundresses, maids or seamstresses with their pay going to the schools. This was tantamount to slavery as many never were able to return home. They were ravaged by white man’s diseases; some were routinely beaten, accidentally killed or murdered.
In recent years, more than 53 burial sites have been found to date near the schools with predominantly unmarked graves containing the remains of thousands of these children. The system ended in 1978. There are four boarding schools that remain but under enlightened conditions of thorough, college-bound education and a curriculum that includes native language, cultural lessons and traditional artisan crafts.
VIVID SETTINGS OF FICTIONAL TOWNS
Don’t bother to attempt to map the coordinates for Durant, Absaroka County, adjacent to the Northern Cheyenne Reservation near the Powder and Bitterroot Rivers, or Fort Pratt, Montana as they are fictional settings. But the descriptions are so clearly painted with words that one can imagine the stark, vast beauty of the Wyoming prairies contrasted with the rugged mountain range.
Craig Johnson has also shifted much of the Cheyenne and Crow Nations south from Montana into Wyoming to suit the Longmire storylines. The author’s respect for his adopted land and its inhabitants shines through in his work.
A WINNER AMONG WESTERN FICTION
It may surprise some to know that Craig Johnson is a native West Virginian, born and reared in Huntington, and educated at Marshall and Temple Universities with degrees in English and Creative Writing. He has resided in Wyoming for most of his adult life and worked a wide variety of jobs including teaching college courses before The Cold Dish debuted when he was 43.
Johnson is not as imposing physically as his fictional creation, the larger-than-life, broad-shouldered, muscular Sheriff Walt Longmire, but is at least equally as fascinating. His breadth of knowledge and the meticulous attention to detail adhered to in crafting, rewriting, and polishing his novels and their sheer readability puts him among the great western writers like Wallace Stegner, Ivan Doig, Norman Maclean, and John McPhee.
How can one not stand up and cheer for an author who when queried about the growing controversy about banned books in schools and libraries, says, “If it’s banned, read it” (Wyoming Tribune Eagle, Will Carpenter)? Hell and Back is a stand-out work. So read it, before it’s banned!
About Craig Johnson:
Craig Johnson is the New York Times bestselling author of the Longmire mysteries, the basis for the hit Netflix original series, Longmire. He is the recipient of the Western Writers of America Spur Award for fiction, and his novella, Spirit of Steamboat, was the first One Book Wyoming selection. He lives in Ucross, Wyoming, population: 26.
