Ben Dejooli is a Navajo cop who can’t escape his past. Six years ago his little sister Ana vanished without a trace. His best friend saw what happened, but he refuses to speak of what he knows, and so was banished from the Navajo tribe. That was the day the crows started following Ben.
Caroline Adams is a nurse with a special talent: she sees things others can’t see. She knows that Ben is more … Ben is more than he seems, and that the crows are trying to tell him something.
What the crows know will shed new light on the mystery of Ana’s disappearance, and throw Ben and Caroline into a race against time to find out what happened before they end up vanishing just like she did.
more
GREAT Author B.B. Griffith captures lightening in the bottle with his writing in his book, Follow The Crow!!!! If you want to find the readers oasis in the book desert, you MUST grab a copy of Follow The Crow! Creative, profound, and artistic writing by an Author who definitely has honed his craft to a knife’s most finely sharpened edge of perfection!! Written ever so beautifully, and Follow The Crow paints a picture landscape with words for the mind of the reader, that forms a great story, and B.B. Griffith tells the story like NO other ever could. I was stunned by this rare work of “book art”, which uses a form of weaving words to create artful and creative storytelling, that impales the readers mind, snares the reader so very smoothly, and takes them to a world apart from the mundane for sure!! Main character Ben Dijooli, a Navajo descendent, and cop on the “rez”, is definitely a unique, and quite lovely character. But then all the characters Author B.B. Griffith wrote in Follow The Crow are as well, and the story Author B.B. Griffith builds around the characters is spellbinding! Reading this rare and gorgeous work in the pages of Follow The Crow, with page turner pages, and explosive action, one will never be the same afterwards. Left me breathless, and digesting the profoundity of a beautiful piece of written work, as well as the mind blowing story itself, at the hands of Author B.B. Griffith, after I read Follow The Crow. Navajo secrets from generations past, still affects the future…but WAIT!…NO SPOILERS! YOU SIMPLY MUST not miss this book!! In other words…
WONDERFUL AUTHOR!!
WONDERFUL WRITING!!
WONDERFUL CHARACTERS!!
WONDERDROUS BOOK!!!
HIGHLY RECOMMEND Follow The Crow!!!
Wonderful, has the author more? Hate for it to end.
First of a trio by Griffith, under the title of The Vanished Series, Follow the Crow is something I have wanted to read for over a year but got in too deep with Netgalley reviews to follow up on it. And it was worth the wait – this is an excellent story, told very well, a family story taking place in northwestern New Mexico, in the Chaco Flats, Farmington, Gallup, Albuquerque, and the small village of Chaco located on the Navajo Reservation.
There are several memorable characters who carry over in the series. Carolyn Adams is an oncology nurse at the main hospital in Alberquerque, working on the Intensive Care Unit for cancer patients, which is separate from the main ICU. Dr. Owen Bennet also works with cancer patients at the Alberquerque hospital. Both also donate time to the Chaco Health Center on the reservation. The other constant throughout the series is The Walker. The Walker is a changing personality, an escort, one you will learn to appreciate as things roll along. And, of course, the crows.
‘Follow the Crow’ involves the Navajo Dejooli family. Ana was Ben’s little sister, born with heart issues, a youngster who disappeared several years ago from the Albuquerque hospital ICU while a family friend, Ben’s best friend, was sitting with her during their extensive death watch. No one ever found out what happened to her body. Ana was a fey child, always happy, a girl who lived in her imagination and was loved by everyone who knew her. Ben has never gotten past the fact that they were not able to say goodbye to Ana as custom dictated. There is a Navajo ritual that separates the living from the dead that helps to accept the loss of a loved one. They were denied that closure, and it still hurts.
Ben lives in the family home with his grandmother and his father. His mother left them after Ana disappeared, herself disappearing into the wide world. Reservation housing is for the most part simple. Several generations of the Dejooli family have resided there, and it is small but comfortable and truly ‘home’ to them all.
And now Ben, a Navajo policeman in his thirties, gets knocked unconscious on the job. Transported to Albuquerque hospital before he regains consciousness, he can’t wait to escape and hastily promises his nurse, Carolyn Adams, that he will follow up with an MRI as she feels there is an underlying problem. He shouldn’t have passed out, certainly not for as long as he was out. Only ongoing harassment from Carolyn and Dr. Owen Bennet gets him in to have the scans done.
And he has brain tumors that are cancerous, the disease is too involved for surgery to be an option. He can’t stand the idea of the hospital ICU after months of sitting with his sister there, so he eventually talks Dr. Bennet into ordering his chemotherapy administered at his home on the reservation. And Carolyn, who volunteers there, will have to administer it. Though the hospital has offered it in the past, she has never been involved in administering it in anything but the hospital setting. They will have to work it out together. They will work out a lot of things, together.
If you find this story interesting, Google Chaco Canyon, which is south of Chaco Flats. It is a very rare Anasazi Solar and Lunar Observatory that became a gathering place for tribes as far away as southern Mexico and California. Over 300 ruins are preserved. It is a treasure of history right in our backyard.
I loved the world and the atmosphere of the book, and that touch of magic which elevates it to a new dimension.
Follow the Crow is an interesting well-written paranormal thriller. The cultural and mystical aspects of the Navajo are quite interesting and add quite a bit to this story. Definitely worth the read.