Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden is slotted nicely into the genre of crime thriller. Some readers—by no means all, by any measure, but certainly a selected group—may be reminded at least in part of the fantasy genre. Or perhaps even the science fiction genre. Or, well, any literary genre which mandates settings in strange or foreign lands. That significantly huge chunk of the world’s readership which remains mostly ignorant of what life is like on Native American reservations in the United States are drawn by force into a society that may be as alien and unknown to them—heck, it may be far more alien and unknown to them—than the galaxy in which Star Wars takes place or Middle Earth, land of hobbits and orcs.
It is not hyperbolic to suggest that most Americans probably can tell you more about the Prime Directive of the Federation in Star Trek than can even identify what the 1885 Major Crimes Act refers to. It is an almost gruesomely appropriate analogy since the Prime Directive is a foundational prohibition against Federation members interfering with the development of an alien civilization. By contrast, the Major Crimes Act is legislation that forces those living on reservations to have certain serious criminal acts investigated only by the federal government. It is like a reverse Prime Directive which takes autonomy away from those actually involved in the crime.
The truths and consequences of the Major Crimes Act is the driving force behind Winter Counts. What is the consequence of the truth that very often the feds simply decide not to prosecute crimes committed on reservations? Both factually and fictionally, one of the consequences is the creation of the concept of “private enforcers” who step in to ensure justice is delivered when the United States Government once again fails in meeting the needs of Native American tribes. So, basically, what we have in Winter Counts is the story of a privately engaged deliverer of justice working in a world where the people who are actually impacted by crime are considered only half-citizens of the nation which they must rely upon to protect them from criminal behavior. If that doesn’t sound just as much like the plot of a fantasy novel or science fiction film as it does a typical crime thriller, what would?
To read Winter Counts is to be thrust into a place that is technically part of the United States, but absolutely feels disconnected from the world most readers will recognize as their own. It is a novel that is much at home in the familiar environs of crime fiction, but at the same time contains elements so strange and foreign that they might as well be taking place on distant worlds.
