Halley's Gathering

Longlisted for the Dzanc Books Prize for Fiction

New Mexico Territory. 1910. Julia Halley, unlikely owner of the Many Springs Canyon Trading Post on the Navajo Reservation, has attracted a small but devoted circle of friends-her "gathering"-both Anglo and Navajo, all with their own stories to tell. Among them, a Southern doctor who opened a free reservation clinic after the Spanish-American War. A Navajo woman, also a healer, who survived the Long Walk of the 1860s. A self-taught photographer and former Franciscan brother. A young surveyor drawn to the Southwest by a fascination with the ancient Anasazi ruins. And living deep in the canyon, Clement Yazzie, half Navajo and half Hopi, whose ruthless reputation conceals a shadowy legacy, and Johanna Yazzie, his enigmatic younger sister, mute since birth.

HALLEY'S GATHERING. A sweeping tale of a new century. When the dawn of the modern is supplanting the violence and isolation of the Old West, but also endangering the Navajo way of life. Where the magnetic Julia Halley struggles against the dictates of polite society to follow her own uncompromising path. Where the controversial explorer Richard Wetherill and the celebrated photographer Edward S. Curtis are among the notable names who play a part. And where, coincidentally, the return of Halley's Comet is just over the horizon.