Deadly Indian Summer

Deadly Indian Summer, Leonard Schonberg, Sunstone Press, 1997

John Hartman is a young doctor in the Indian Health Service, working at a hospital near the Navajo reservation just outside of Gallup, New Mexico. It's a sort of "get away from it all" assignment for Hartman. While at another hospital, he endured a bitter divorce. Later, he fell in love with, and becomes a father with, a fellow hospital employee named Valentina. One day, he finds both of them murdered at the hands of her very jealous ex-husband.

At the Navajo hospital, a young Navajo boy, Joseph Williams, is brought in suffering from high fever, labored breathing and a very rapid pulse, among other symptoms. The initial diagnosis is that he has a strong case of pneumonia, and treatment is started, to little effect. The boy's grandmother, Mary Begay, reaches the hospital and demands the right to take Joseph home, now, and have a Sing to heal him. It is a Navajo restoring-of-balance ceremony that involves many people and can last up to a week.

While the Sing is going on, the hospital lab gets the results on Joseph. He doesn't have pneumonia, he has a very contagious form of the plague. Several hospital staff members contract the disease, leading to near panic between whites and Indians in Gallup. The town's leading citizens would like to seal off the reservation, quarantine the hospital, and send any Indian non-plague cases to another hospital a considerable distance away. Meantime, before he contracts the disease, John convinces those at the Sing that coming to the hospital and taking daily doses of antibiotics is a very good idea.

Did I mention that the person who brought Joseph to the hospital was Sam Spencer, the Secretary of State, a native of New Mexico who was attending his mother-in-law's funeral?

This one is pretty good. Others are more qualified than I to judge the accuracy of the protrayal of the Navajo. Otherwise, it has good characters, it's a quick read, and it provides a glimpse at one part of Navajo culture. It's worth reading.