New Mexico Author Q & A

Images by Elaine Querry

“In 100 years, someone will open The Death of Bernadette Lefthand and still be consumed by the wisdom, the different cultural beliefs between tribes, and struck that love and jealousy are the poles from which evil comes. In my top five favorite reads.”

—Jo-Ann Mapson, author of Blue Rodeo, The Wilder Sister, and Solomon’s Oak

Bernadette is one of those rare books that leave you stunned, wondering what hit you. Because it’s the story of a crime—the brutal murder of a beautiful Navajo powwow dancer—as well as a tale of clashing cultures, of systematic evil, of personal tragedy, it comprises several layers of narration.

“What?” you say. Yes, there are five point-of-view characters, plus an unnamed speaker who steps in with background commentary. This should not work. It breaks all the rules for fiction writing, rules that are pounded into every aspiring fiction writer. Yet somehow, it does work in Bernadette. Which goes to show, a writer who’s truly consumed by their subject can break the rules and get away with it.

When asked how he pulled it off as a first novel, author Ron Querry shrugs (figuratively) and says, in effect, he doesn’t have a clue. He just sat down and wrote it, following his gut.

Winner of the 1993 Border Regional Library Association Southwest Book Award and the 1994 Mountains and Plains Booksellers Association Regional Book Award, Bernadette was reissued in a 25th Anniversary Edition in 2018 by Cinco Puntos Press, El Paso. It’s been published in French, German, and Bulgarian as well. 

Ron Querry, a member of the Choctaw Nation, has been living in New Mexico off and on his entire life. As a child he spent summers at his grandparents’ home in Montezuma. After a stint in the Marine Corps, he earned several degrees, eventually getting his PhD at UNM. He’s taught in academia and since 2006 has lived in Las Vegas with his wife, Elaine, a photographer. He’s also the author of the 1998 thriller Bad Medicine.

Here’s our recent interview:

Ramona: Bernadette is written in multiple voices: Gracie and Starr (first person), with additional shorter sections in close personal third person or omniscient point-of-view (Tom George, Bernadette, Emmett Take Horse, and an unnamed narrator). Using multiple points of view is challenging even for very experienced writers, yet you accomplished it in a first novel. Did you have an overall vision of how the different voices would cohere in a plot?

Ron: I had no plan at all for the novel. It was my first ever attempt at such a thing and I simply began writing and I found I was telling the story from the point of view of a young Indian girl—Gracie Lefthand. Gracie is telling us about that terrible day when the tribal police came to her house to tell her father that her older sister, Bernadette, had been killed.

It was only when there came a point in Gracie’s narrative that I realized that I needed to let the reader know something that Gracie would not have known, would not have been able to articulate, that I understood I needed to introduce a second narrator . . . a second voice to tell us what Gracie (16 years old) would not know or would not have the appropriate voice with which to tell.

And this happened again when I discovered that I needed someone else’s point of view, or someone else who would know what others did/could not. I was always surprised at what direction things would go.

I should tell you that if in reading the book you find yourself surprised by some turn, you can be pretty certain that I was surprised as well. I appreciate you saying that this use of multiple narrators or points of view is challenging and that you feel I accomplished it.

My late author friend Chuck Bowden told me once that he was given Bernadette and that he really didn’t favor fiction but that he kept after it because he didn’t think I could possibly maintain a young girl’s voice throughout. I was pleased that he thought I did so.

Ramona: The personas/voices of Gracie and Starr, the former model who employs Bernadette, come across quite convincingly. Do you have a knack for getting inside the heads of your characters?

Ron: I prefer to think that Gracie and Starr got into my head. In any case, because I imagined these characters, I suppose it would be fair to say they are me. I can tell you that I knew the sounds of their voices and what they were thinking at all times. Funny, but what they looked like . . . not so much. Only later would I see someone and think, “That could be Gracie,” or Bernadette, etc. Because I had a real individual in mind for Starr, I always had a picture of her in my head.

Ramona: The voice of Gracie, Bernadette’s grieving younger sister, is especially poignant and consistent throughout. Her description of Bernadette’s last powwow dance is heart-breaking, since she and the reader know already that Bernadette will die. Was this scene hard to write?

Ron: I don’t know . . . I’m sure it must’ve been hard. I know it broke my heart. And when Elaine came home from work that evening and I read to her what I’d written—as was my habit—she wept. And the fact she did so made me think I’d gotten it right.

Ramona: One of the most striking aspects of the novel is how deftly you portray the Navajo and Apache cultures. Do you think the fact that you are Choctaw gave you any insights into the Navajo or Apache culture? Or perhaps an ability to perceive aspects of Navajo or Apache culture that white people aren’t likely to notice?

Ron: The fact that I am Choctaw probably didn’t afford me any particular insight into Navajo or Apache lifeways, other than possibly an awareness that these different tribes or nations are as different as any other nations are or can be from one another.

I’m probably more like Starr is in that respect—that is, I have read and studied the extant materials having to do with the people about whom I write. I have tried very hard to make sure that I don’t make silly mistakes—some readers will always write and point out errors. Or what they perceive to be an error, anyway. 

Ramona: You say in your Afterword that you assumed the book would find an audience, but it wouldn’t be Indian, especially not Navajo. Who are the readers of Bernadette? How it has been received over the years in the Navajo community? I’m thinking of a similar example: the mysteries of Tony Hillerman have been popular among Navajo readers. He also wrote about Navajo spiritual beliefs.  

Ron: Over the twenty-five-plus years that Bernadette has been available, it has enjoyed popular appeal with all kinds of readers. Navajo and Jicarilla Apache readers, especially, have expressed to me admiration and enjoyment. My comment that I didn’t expect a Navajo audience was based on the fact that the book has to do with witchcraft and other aspects of Navajo lifeways that I anticipated would not appeal to traditional Navajo people. Indeed, I’ve had younger Navajo people tell me that their parents might not be comfortable with the book. I don’t really know.

Ramona: The cover photo of the second edition is perfect. Kudos to Elaine Querry!

Ron Querry: I love that image and the design of the cover. The image is one Elaine took at Taos Pueblo 30-some years ago. She calls it “Dream of Bernadette.”

Ramona: Is Bernadette available in bookstores?

Ron: The book is distributed in those mysterious ways that books get to booksellers. I have nothing to do with that. Of course, Amazon is a huge bookseller, but I’ve seen the book in bookstores and gift shops. I’m always happy to see it, as you can imagine.

Ramona: What about the book’s reception (both editions) has pleased you? What has displeased you?

Ron: I am pleased with the book’s reception in all its various editions in every way. If I’m displeased by anything, it would be the lack of promotion and distribution that I reckon every author feels. I confess that I have a hard time with self-promotion, and that’s clearly not a good thing for writers and other artists.

New Mexico Author Q & A

After nearly thirty years living in a remote New Mexico village, Charlotte Plantz (aka Claudia Clavel) had a prodigious collection of stories to tell. During that time I was a frequent visitor to Mike and Charlotte’s adobe home and heard the stories as they happened.

The initial question of course is how do a couple of Anglo artists from California fit into a traditional Spanish village? Many small social signals are given when people are getting to know each other.

Charlotte laughs when she says her neighbors must have figured she and Mike were okay when they had huge shouting matches in their yard. (This was during their early years there, when money was tight and many survival decisions had to be made as they worked nonstop to make their small adobe house livable.) “They heard us fighting and must have decided we were normal people!” she says.

In the early colonial days, life in these N.M. villages was really hard. Today, some of the problems have changed, but life remains hard. In the modern era, Spanish settlers and Native Americans were no longer waging gun battles over territory, but many small land holders lost their land to unscrupulous Anglos who knew how to work the new U.S. legal system. Poverty, alcohol and drug abuse, and other ills followed.

Charlotte and Mike got to know the village’s families as babies were born, grew up, and had children of their own. While hosting their own grandsons during the summers, Mike and Charlotte offered village kids acceptance and new experiences, such as tasting Romaine lettuce for the first time and swimming in the Blue Hole in Santa Rosa. They hired locals for construction projects at their home, realizing these men had artistic and craft skills that the wider world had overlooked.

For many months, Charlotte agonized over whether to publish Accidental Anthropologists, even though she’d changed all the names. Finally she sat down with some neighbors and read the book aloud to them.

“Have I gone too far?” she asked.

The response from “Perfecto”: “I tell the same kind of stories when our family gathers. I want my children and grandchildren to know this is the way life is here. It’s part of our culture.”

And “Pilar” said: “I could listen to your stories all day. This was better than watching a telenovela.”

(Disclaimer: I edited early versions of both books.)

Accidental Anthropologists was published in 2014 and continues to sell steadily, especially in N.M. bookstores. Why do you think it's so resilient?

Charlotte: The feedback I continue to receive comes from the fact that it is the only book written about a specific time frame that includes Vietnam vets and their relationship with their neighbors in a Spanish Northern New Mexico village.

Ramona: I know you've gotten some unexpected responses from readers far and wide. Do you want to share any? 

Charlotte: A number of readers have found their way to my door, in spite of my changing the names of people and places, including my pseudonym as author. A San Diego couple emailed via my publisher to ask about place names. They were connecting mileage to cities and villages, to no avail. We began a correspondence. The couple flew out to meet me and we became friends. The Pfaffs visit twice a year, timed around Las Vegas cultural events.

A recent couple found me via my acupuncturist, who has bought around 30 books to give to clients. By now, I’ve agreed to meet folks who enjoy Accidental Anthropologists because I’m curious to know what they have to say about it. 

One of my favorite stories is Chapter 10, “It took a village,” in which you describe how people go up to the cemetery on the hill when they need a break from their problems. Do you think they might be connecting with their ancestors there?

I also loved reading about how you drove in circles around the church as various people approached to find out why you were distraught. Do you want to say anything more about that experience?

Charlotte: The people here stay very connected to those who have passed on. I’m pretty sure parking at the cemetery has that connection. Over the years, Mike and I have experienced the same feeling. We lost all the “drinkers,” and they rest in peace in the little campo santo, so we continue to feel their presence whenever we are near there.

Times have changed in the village. We have lost so many neighbors it’s hard to imagine I would have that same experience (driving around the church). Though those of us who remain still care for one another.

You and Mike faced some pretty scary situations over the years. Do you think fearlessness is necessary in order to be accepted in a different culture? 

Charlotte: The biggest change for us came early on, when I stormed the village over an ugly rumor that I was on the “take” from a movie company. I knocked on every door in the village and gave a frantic speech about honesty. From that day forward my neighbors nearly bowed when they met me; I had everyone’s respect for standing up to gossip. The people here have great respect for fearlessness. I continue to wear that like a shawl!

Accidental Anthropologists opened my eyes to how our society judges disadvantaged people so harshly. For example, I saw how easy it is to get on the wrong side of the law enforcement and legal structure if you’re poor. Do you want to say anything about this?

Charlotte: Landing in the middle of a group of Vietnam vets with drug and alcohol problems touched the core of my being. I have always been sympathetic to down-trodden folks so it was natural for me to interact. The “drinkers” made it easy for us, as they respected our privacy and space. They knew we couldn’t enter their world of self-medication, and were grateful for our respect as human beings. They were hard workers and helped us in a number of ways throughout the years. We feel privileged to have been a part of their lives.

Has life in San Ignacio changed for you since Accidental Anthropologists was published? Are you happy you used a pseudonym?

Charlotte: I am happy I used a pseudonym for a couple of reasons: I was so insecure as an “author” I had a hard time writing my name over and over. The minute I changed my name to Claudia, my brain opened up and words flew out of me. My new name gave me distance and allowed me to feel free to write whatever came out of my head.

The other reason the pseudonym worked for me had to do with the village and our neighbors. I did not want to bring attention to San Ignacio or myself. I was pretty sure readers would be checking us out, and that proved to be true. I can’t tell you how many readers have told me they drove around villages trying to figure out where the story took place.

Someone in the real San Ignacio, north of Las Vegas, told a friend that people knocked on doors there asking about the book.

Me and My Magical Life begins with your life before you arrived in San Ignacio. A lot of people throw off the conventional life, but many of them crash and burn. You, on the other hand, discovered your true calling as an artist and have thrived. What was the hardest thing you ever had to do?

Charlotte: The hardest thing was to walk out the door of my old life. If it hadn’t been for my daughters, and Mike and Murray (a close friend), and the Abeyta family, I’m not sure I would have succeeded. Although, survival is a powerful force, so who knows how it might have played out.

Did you wrestle a lot with what to tell and what to leave out of Me and My Magical Life?

Charlotte:  I probably have enough untold stories to fill another book. I often wake up with that thought. It was easy to leave out negativity, and sometimes too much information. With both books I automatically wrote a chapter of equal length every time I sat down to write. It was like automatic writing, and self-editing. Very strange!

Writing Me and My Magical Life was a wonderful experience. I felt free to use my own name, and those of my friends and family. I felt like I had things to say of importance: mental health, women’s rights, belief in oneself. I hoped my book would be inspiring and educational. Most of all, I now trust the subconscious part of my brain completely. From that place, all the connections came together.

I’m about to start another book: My Two Felons and a Misdemeanor. This book will tell the stories of our three grandsons and how they got into trouble, and how they found their way out. The three of them are doing well and finding success in their lives. It’s a story worth telling. 

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Accidental Anthropologists and Me and My Magical Life  are available at Tome on the Range in Las Vegas, N.M., and on Amazon.