QUEST FOR JUSTICE

Bringing a killed-off character back to life has helped David Heska Wanbli Weiden resurrect his writing career, resulting in an award-winning debut crime thriller set on a Native American reservation.

Winter Counts is centred on Virgil Wounded Horse, a tribal enforcer who earns a living by meting out punishment when the justice system doesn’t. He’s not short of work. When heroin snakes into “the rez” and bites his nephew, Virgil teams up with his ex-girlfriend to uncover who is responsible and how to stop the flow, all while having to confront issues with his own identity.

Several years before Weiden committed to writing his novel, he had published a short noir story about a tribal enforcer. He began that story