Jennifer Kitchell

First Line: With low tongue and open mouth, the man began soft as a jazzman to pull off the seduction.

Lilli Chischilly became a lawyer in order to protect her people-- the Navajo-- even to testifying before Congress about Colorado River water usage. Happily married, she is disconcerted when her childhood friend, Jerome Bah, moves back to the reservation and makes contact with her, but she's thrown even further off balance when the president of the Navajo Nation insists she joins Senator Lee and his family on a rafting trip through the Grand Canyon.

The Mormon presidential candidate whom many believe will be the next President of the United States has a reason why he wants Lilli along on the trip. One of his campaign promises is to use new technology to wring every last bit of water and power from Mother Nature. He also wants a legal guarantee to be granted to California for the water rights to the Colorado River. (Which means that-- no matter what happens-- California would get its water regardless of anyone else who needs it.)

Thinking Lilli will be a captive audience, Lee intends to make sure she agrees to this legal guarantee. What neither of them know is that Lee has an enemy who's determined to kill him somewhere along the river down in the depths of the Grand Canyon. Furthermore, the enemy's chances of success are excellent since there are only eleven people traveling on the raft.

Kitchell has a very lyrical writing style that has unexpected touches of humor, as when someone claims another character is "so narrow minded he could applaud with his ears."

The raft trip through the Grand Canyon is extremely suspenseful, since the reader knows there's a killer waiting for them somewhere along the route. A secondary plot line that involves Lilli's childhood friend, Jerome Bah, adds tension between Lilli and Jerome as well as serving as a natural springboard for sharing many Navajo customs and stories.

We could learn much from the Navajo. Tony Hillerman knew this, and Jennifer Kitchell, in her beautifully told story, is following in his footsteps.

Life is brief, she thought, tenuous, but it has a point. We are here to create life, and to teach it, and to die old in beauty. "Beauty" did not mean you walked to old age with no illness, or you walked to old age with cosmetically enhanced qualities of the young. It was not about physical attributes. It was about a quality of character.

May all of you walk in beauty.… (mere)

Lilli Chischilly is a Navajo lawyer who has found a pair of mutilated coyote carcasses carefully laid out on the hood of her vehicle. This is clearly a message, but the meaning of the message is a mystery. In the meantime, Jerome, Lilli's childhood soul mate, has returned to the Navajo Nation and alludes to a dark and burdensome secret that he wants Lilli to discover. Lilli has this on her mind when her boss asks her to escort presidential candidate Lee, his family and handlers on a river raft trip down the Grand Canyon. Lillie rightly guesses that this is a publicity stunt and has everything to do with the politics of water and land use that is ever present in the Western United States. If all of this isn't enough, a sniper with a grudge over a century old massacre is stalking the presidential candidate and his family with massacre plans of his own.

The plot of Girl with Skirt of Stars is fast paced and kept me reading into the wee hours of the morning. I did find the narrative a bit choppy and the characters lacking in depth, though, and this kept me from attaching to and caring very deeply about them. This type of book seems to call for better character development than Kitchell provided. There were also elements of the story that seemed quite important yet were never developed and just got dropped at the end. This is Kitchell's debut novel, so I'm hoping that these shortfalls are something that will improve in future.

As a native of the Southwest, I thought the descriptions of the Four Corners area were beautiful and I was drawn into the setting. The inclusion of quite a few Navajo words (there is a glossary at the end of the book) and how those words "mean" within the Navajo culture was a fantastic look into a little known people group. Language nuance is an important part of Kitchell's story.

Overall, I was pleased with Girl with Skirt of Stars and would recommend it to those interested in a fast paced novel set in the Southwest.

I would like to thank the publisher, Pronghorn Press, for providing me with a review copy of Girl with Skirt of Stars.… (mere)

I loved this book. Lilli Chischilly is fascinating, a well educated lawyer with a strong belief in her Navajo traditions. Rarely does a novel get me reading up on things the author touches, but I found myslef googling the Navajo religious traditions trying to get a better understanding. I reread the book after a couple of weeks of digesting all the overlapping story lines. Lilli's decidedly odd marriage, her relationship with her childhood friend Jerome Bah, and the mystery of what he photographed, then there's the presidental candidate and his strange family relationships. I thoroughly enjoyed the story, would love to hear more about Jerome and Lilli in future stories.… (mere)

This was a Review Copy received from Pronghorn Press via LibraryThing

When I began reading this my first inclination was to think I had found someone to take Tony Hillerman's place. It was all there: murder with symbolic overtones, Navajo law enforcement, arrogant white men. Everything a reader needs for a good murder mystery set in Navajoland. "Derivative," I thought. But I didn't mind because I love Tony Hillerman for a good relaxing mystery with some spiritual overtones.

I was right, and wrong. Oh so very wrong. Jennifer Kitchell presents us with Lilli Chischilly, a strong, independent woman trained in the law back at home protecting her people from the wrongs of the white world's vision of ownership. Soon enough, Lilli is caught up in the politics of a Mormon politician deemed to be a shoo-in to be the next POTUS.

The story leads us a merry ride down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, part family get-away and part political stunt. Lilli's there as a politically correct stand-in for the Navajo people, but being an independent woman, Lilli is far from correct.

Add in the mystery of what her friend, Jerome has photographed, a guy named Duane who is stalking the party as they raft down the river ready to wreak vengeance for the Mountain Meadows Massacre, some historic narrative and what we have is a good read.

Now, I am not going to tell you this is a perfect read, I had some problems with the ambiguous ending and the little bombshell clues dropped along the way that never got resolved. There are some things I would have liked to know more about, but that would be reviewing the book I would have liked, not the one Dr. Kitchell wrote.

I liked the one Dr. Kitchell wrote just fine, and think that if you're a fan of mysteries with an American Indian setting, you'll like it just fine too.… (mere)