Wyoming author Craig Johnson’s Daughter of the Morning Star, the 17th novel in Walt Longmire series, was just released in September 2021 and is already New York Times bestseller.
The novel focuses on Jaya "Longshot" Long, a star athlete of the Lame Deer Lady Stars High School basketball team. Jaya is haunted by the disappearance of her older sister, a victim of the scourge of missing Native Woman in Indian Country.
In discussing the theme and issues of his latest novel Johnson said, "The plight of missing and murdered indigenous women is so great that I had to reassure my publisher that the statistics contained in this novel are accurate. The numbers are staggering, and they speak for themselves. What if I were to tell you that the chances of a Native woman being murdered is ten times the national average, or that murder is the third leading cause of death for indigenous women? What if I told you that four out of five Native women have experienced societal violence, with half having experienced sexual violence as well. Half of Native women have been stalked in their lifetime, and they are two times as likely to experience violence and rape than their Anglo counterparts. Heartbreakingly, the majority of these Native women’s murders are by non-Natives on Native-owned land."
Craig Johnson is the author of the Longmire mysteries, the basis for the hit Netflix original series Longmire.
He is the recipient of the Western Writers of America Spur Award for fiction, the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award for fiction the several prestigious awards from the French , the Nouvel Observateur Prix du Roman Noir, and the Prix SNCF du Polar.
His novella Spirit of Steamboat was the first One Book Wyoming selection. He lives in Ucross, Wyoming, population 25.
