The Cherokee Word for Role Model, a guest post by Linda Rodriguez

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: If you're a regular here at JRW, there's no need for me to introduce Linda Rodriguez. She's been a vital part of our community for a long time, and she's another friend who has gone from reader, to commenter, to writer, to bursting out of the gate as a published author.  Her first Skeet Bannion novel, EVERY LAST SECRET, won the Malice Domestic Award for Best Traditional Mystery, and you know that's a guarantee of a good read (Yes, I won it myself.)

Skeet Bannion, the Cherokee-Latina chief of campus police, will be back solving crimes and struggling with her complicated personal life in Linda's third novel, EVERY HIDDEN FEAR, which will be out May 6th. Today, Linda tells us about a part of Skeet's heritage - and our own.

I’m paying $33 to attend a movie that I just saw for free a couple of months ago, and I’m still excited about it. My youngest son is going along, and he’s never seen this film before now. I can’t wait for him to share this with me. The showing of the film is a fundraiser for two causes close to my heart, Kansas City Cherokee Community and the Kansas City Indian Center. The movie is called The Cherokee Word for Water, and it’s all about a woman coming into her own power. That woman happens to be my role model and icon, Wilma Mankiller.

Like most women in today’s United States, I’ve had some role models in women in my family and K-12 teachers, but once I reached late adolescence, all my professors were male, teaching me about mostly male writers, thinkers, and doers of great deeds. So I had a lot of male role models out in the world. That’s why strong women role models have been important to me—women who have made a difference in the world in some way, women who have pointed the way to the woman I wanted to become. And in my pantheon of such strong female role models, Wilma Mankiller sits right at the top.

Traditionally, the Cherokee were a matrilineal people. Women owned the land and houses, and the children stayed with their mothers and those extended families in cases of divorce, which were easily obtained by either the husband or wife without rancor or stigma. Women could and did hunt and go to war with the men if they so chose, and the tribe had a special position, the ghigua (Beloved Woman), for women who had gone to war and later married and raised children.

Women shared power with men on the councils that governed the Cherokee towns, and men could not take the town to war unless the ghiguas agreed, since they were considered the wisest, having experienced both genders’ sides of life. One of the first things European men did when encountering the Cherokee was to work hard to persuade the men to throw women out of any access to power. It took over two centuries, but they finally succeeded.

In 20th century Cherokee life, women were treated much as women were elsewhere in the United States, although the more traditionally inclined still retained vestiges of the old egalitarian ways. However, the traditionally inclined were not those who gained power since power within the Cherokee Nation, as within most Indian nations, for centuries had been funneled to those who conformed to what the U.S. government wanted. And for centuries, the U.S. government had wanted the Cherokee to stop listening to their women and turn away from traditional community-based decision-making. When Wilma came along in the 1970s, the government-supported male power structure had become corrupt, and the more traditional members of the tribe had been shunted away from all help or development and lived in grinding poverty without electric power or even access to good, clean water.

Against the wishes of most of the male power structure, Wilma spearheaded a community self-help campaign to bring clean, running water to one of these communities. The film, The Cherokee Word for Water, is about this very first battle of Wilma’s, not the better-known ones when she became Principal Chief. This is about the project where she decided who she would be and became that woman who would later become the first female chief in centuries.

Wilma Mankiller overcame so many obstacles in her life—poverty, the contempt of men in power, chronic pain from an accident that devastated her physically, chronic illnesses, corruption within the tribal government, and more— to become a woman who inspired people all over the world. She believed in the power of community and love, and she built her life on those beliefs, even when it wasn’t easy—and such a life seldom is. She remains one of my heroes. Much of who I am and what I have accomplished in my life I owe to the example set for me by Wilma. I even named my protagonist’s beloved “streetfighter” cat after Wilma, because she’s one of Skeet Bannion’s role models, as well.

Have women role models out in public life played an important part in your life? What women have been role models for you to help you visualize the kind of person you wanted to become?

Linda Rodriguez’s third Skeet Bannion novel, Every Hidden Fear, will be published on May 6 and is available for pre-order now. Her second Skeet mystery, Every Broken Trust, was a selection of Las Comadres National Latino Book Club and featured in Cosmo for Latinas. Her first Skeet novel, Every Last Secret, won the Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition and was a Barnes & Noble mystery pick and a finalist for the International Latino Book Award. Her short story, “The Good Neighbor,” has been optioned for film. For her books of poetry, Skin Hunger (Scapegoat Press) and Heart’s Migration (Tia Chucha Press), Rodriguez received numerous awards and fellowships. She is immediate past president of the Borders Crimes chapter of Sisters in Crime, founding board member of Latino Writers Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers, Kansas City Cherokee Community, and International Thriller Writers. Find her on Twitter as @rodriguez_linda, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/LindaRodriguezWrites, and blogs with The Stiletto Gang http: http://thestilettogang.blogspot.com/, Writers Who Kill http://writerswhokill.blogspot.com/, and her own blog http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com.

Let's Hear It for the Bad Boys

RHYS BOWEN: Today Jungle Red is delighted to host one of our trusty regular contributors, Linda Rodriguez. Since hanging out with us Linda has written a stellar novel that won her the St Martin's Press Best First Traditional Mystery award plus other honors, and is about to publish the second. (See what hanging out with Jungle Reds can do for you??)

 And I hadn't realized that she is a woman of many talents, an internationally renowned poet. But today she's talking about one of our favorite subjects--BAD BOYS. Take it away, Linda.

LINDA RODRIGUEZ :  

In the second Skeet Bannion novel, Every Broken Trust, which is launching May 7, I’ve complicated Skeet’s life and relationships with a dark and dangerous man of mystery who walks into the story and makes Skeet feel things that scare her, as well as bringing out the jealous side of nice Joe Louzon, Skeet’s friend and possible love interest. This was not what I’d planned to have happen in this book. I don’t know where this bad boy came from to complicate Skeet’s and my lives, except of course he had to come from my own head.

I must confess I’ve always had a fascination with the bad boy. You know, like Marc Antony, Heathcliff, Sydney Carton in Tale of Two Cities, Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront, James Dean in Rebel without a Cause, and Buffy’s Spike. I know it’s not healthy, but judging by the sheer number of bad boys in fairy tales, literature, movies, and television, it must be pretty common.

I have been fortunate enough to have been married to two of the nicest men in the world, my late first husband and my current husband, but before and between them, I had lamentable taste in men. I blame it on all the reading I did as a child. The bad boys were always the most interesting guys. I mean, Dickens’s Sydney Carton was a drunken wastrel of a lawyer prostituting his great intellect to the ambitions of lesser men with more willpower, sure. But what a passion he had for pretty Lucy Manette! He sacrificed his own life to save the man she loved, just so she would be happy. Wow! And Heathcliff, well, we all know how he made the pages steam with his great love for Cathy.

One sizzling scene in Buffy of a lovesick Spike watching outside Buffy’s window at night inspired me to write a poem, “Outside Your House at Midnight, Coyote” (“Closing his eyes, Coyote can see within/ your walls as you undress and slide under/ covers”).  This was followed by a whole sequence of poems about the bad boy archetype as Coyote, the Native American trickster figure, such as “Coyote in Black Leather,” “Three O’Clock in the Morning Alone, Coyote,” “Coyote Invades Your Dreams,” “Coyote at Your Wedding,” and others, ending finally with “Coyote in High School,” where I asked, “I wonder/ if anyone ever warns the hard-shelled boys in leather/ against the honor-roll girls?”  (These are my most popular poems with women. I even have a whole group of female fans in the UK just for the Coyote poems.)

Of course, I am the woman who wrote an entire book of passionate love poems with the title Skin Hunger (“forgive me for touching so much/ while we talk/ I can’t help myself”). So the Coyote poems and the new bad boy in my mystery novels should come as no surprise to anyone, least of all me.

After the wild and disastrous period in my life still referred to by family and friends as the time of “the mad monk” (don’t ask!), I began to date a man who was a number of years younger than me. One woman friend confronted me to tell me over and over again that I was being stupid, that this younger man was only going to get tired of me and throw me over, that it was just sex that was blinding me. I tried to explain that I loved the kindness and brilliance of this man, but she kept holding forth. Finally, fed up, I said sweetly, “You’re absolutely right, of course. I know he’s no good and is going to break my heart, but I just can’t help myself—the sex is just so good!” Her mouth flew open in silence, and she stormed out, never to be seen by me again. That younger bad boy and I have been together now for twenty-five years.

So let’s hear it for the bad boys! Have you a penchant for the guys who exude trouble, the dark and dangerous types? Have you had any of those passionate, crazy, and sometimes destructive loves? Or do you like to keep those guys between the pages of a book, as I prefer nowadays?

And thank you, Rhys, for hosting me on Jungle Red Writers today. I love the Jungle Reds and am grateful for all the ways you lovely women support and promote other writers.

Linda Rodriguez’s second Skeet Bannion novel, Every Broken Trust (St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books), will be published May 7. Her first Skeet novel, Every Last Secret, won the Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition, was selected by Las Comadres National Book Club, and was a Barnes & Noble mystery pick. For her books of poetry, Skin Hunger (Scapegoat Press) and Heart’s Migration (Tia Chucha Press), Rodriguez received the Midwest Voices & Visions Award, Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, Thorpe Menn Award, finalist, Eric Hoffer Book Award, KCArtsFund Inspiration Award, and Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. She is the president of the Borders Crimes chapter of Sisters in Crime, a founding board member of Latino Writers Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers, Kansas City Cherokee Community, and International Thriller Writers. She was formerly director of the University of Missouri-Kansas City Women’s Center. She spends too much time on Twitter as @rodriguez_linda and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/LindaRodriguezWrites.  She blogs about writers, writing, and the absurdities of everyday life at http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com.

RHYS: Thank you, Linda. And good luck with the new book. I think I had the same illustrator for my first St Martin's books. It looks like one of my covers! And folks, Linda will be giving away a copy of the new book to the best comment of the day, so do chime in.

Pico de Gallo from Linda Rodriguez

LUCY BURDETTE: We are all so excited about Linda Rodriguez's debut novel, but I was doubly delighted to find out on Monday that she's also the author of a Mexican cookbook. So I begged her to share a recipe...and ps, the photo is not of Linda's pico de gallo, so don't be surprised if your dish looks nothing like this:).

LINDA RODRIGUEZ: The “I Don’t Know How To Cook” Book: Mexican was designed as part of a series to make cooking easy, even for people who don’t know how to cook or have never tried to cook. If fast food tacos and burritos are your idea of Mexican food, you’re in for a surprise. No one eating what passes for commercial Mexican food in America would have any idea of the variety of tastes and textures good Mexican food provides—or the variety of fruits and vegetables (almost always missing on that restaurant plate) found in good Mexican cooking.

Rooster’s Bill (Pico de Gallo)

You will find this different from the pico de gallo that your favorite Mexican restaurant serves, which is made from diced tomatoes, onions, and peppers. Use this as a sauce for tacos or as a side dish for a meal.
Serves 4

What You Need:
1 medium jicama
1 small yellow onion
1 large orange
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon ground oregano

What You Do:
1. Wash, pare, and chop jicama into 1/2" chunks. Remove skin from onion and cut into 1/4" pieces.
2. Pare and section orange, reserving juice, and add to jicama. Pour orange juice over mixture. Add onion, lemon juice, and salt. Stir until evenly mixed.
3. Cover and refrigerate at least 1 hour before serving.
4. Sprinkle with chili powder and oregano before serving.

This recipe got its name because it is frequently served by street vendors in Mexico City as finger food for their stand-up diners. The action of eating with the fingers is compared to the rooster pecking at corn in the farmyard.

Published in The “I Don’t Know How To Cook” Book: Mexican (Adams Media, 2008)

Thanks Linda! And good luck with the launch of EVERY LAST SECRET!

A Lady and a Princess: a guest blog by Linda Rodriguez

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Linda Rodriguez is one of those honorary Reds who regularly brighten the back blog with their funny, thoughtful and informative comments.

We followed her from aspiring author working hard at her craft, to entrant in the St. Martin's/Malice Domestic writing contest, to winning the award and landing a contract with Minotaur! (I can assure you that winning the Malice Domestic award is the very pinnacle of writerly achievement.) Yes, I did get the Malice Domestic Award myself. Shut up! I'm being totally objective!

Now, Linda's debut is almost here!

Half-Cherokee Marquitta “Skeet” Bannion thought she was leaving her troubles behind when she fled the stress of being the highest-ranking woman in the Kansas City Police Department, a jealous cop ex-husband, and a disgraced alcoholic ex-cop father. Moving to a small town to be chief of a college’s campus police force, she builds a life outside of her work. She might even begin a new relationship with the amiable Brewster police chief.

All of this is threatened when the student editor of the school newspaper is found murdered on campus. Skeet must track down the killer, following trails that lead to some of the most powerful people in the university. In the midst of her investigation, Skeet assumes responsibility for a vulnerable teenager when her ex-husband and seriously ailing father wind up back on her hands. Time is running out and college administrators demand she conceal all college involvement in the murder, but Skeet will not stop until she’s unraveled every last secret.

Today, Linda's going to tell us about a very personal inspiration for one of the characters in Every Last Secret.


In Every Last Secret, my mystery novel that will be released on April 24, the protagonist, Skeet Bannion, has a dog, a collie named Lady. Lady plays a quietly important role in the book. By taking Lady into her new home, Skeet is making a statement that her life will be different from what it’s been, more settled, more stable, and as tragedy hits her neighbors, Lady, along with Skeet’s cat, provides a lifeline to a grieving and troubled teenager. The truth, however, is that Lady is in this book and the next two in the series because she was in my life first.

When I was ten years old, we moved to a small town in Oklahoma close to where my father’s family lived on a small farm that went back generations. I didn’t realize it at that time, but my wildly dysfunctional parents were in even more trouble than usual, so those years with my five younger siblings in that tiny town would pile more adult responsibilities on my skinny shoulders than I was already carrying—and my parents had turned to me at age ten to make the decision of where we would settle for the next several years, near my mother’s parents in Oklahoma City or near my father’s family in rural Oklahoma.

Shortly after we moved in, my mother’s parents in Oklahoma City brought me a collie. I was collie-crazy. I’d been reading and re-reading Albert Payson Terhune’s books about Lassie for years. And what a gorgeous collie they brought me! Princess was a former show champion, who’d been bred too early and too often until she could no longer bear living pups. Her owners were going to put her to sleep until my grandparents asked for her. Princess and I took one look at each other and fell deeply in love. She slept at the foot of my bed in the uninsulated attic room where I slept. My own choice, it was the only way I could have a room of my own since no one wanted to share it with me. When it got too cold, Princess would climb in bed with me, and I’d sleep as warmly as anyone could want.

After leaving us in Oklahoma, my Navy father went overseas, and my mother fell apart and often was not in our home or even our town for days at a time. When she was at home, she was often sleeping or hung-over. Fortunately, we lived right across the street from the school (K-12), and I could get younger brothers and sister off to school and go myself, dashing across the street to check on the baby at every class change and recess and lunchtime.

As my baby brother grew more mobile, this balancing act became harder and harder to manage. He began to take off in the afternoons and wander the town in his diaper. The school would get calls for me to leave class and come get him—because Princess would accompany him and guard him. She refused to let him into the street if a car were coming, and no one could touch him with her around, not even the local police officers. So I would leave school, pick the baby up blocks from our house, and carry him home with Princess walking at my side.

Princess loved to eat the apricots that fell from the tree in our backyard and had a constant battle with the wasps who wanted them all for themselves. Several times she alerted me to rattlesnakes in hedges of the yard when one of the kids was heading in that direction. Old as she was, she could at times be as playful as a young pup, and whenever she felt there was danger near, her years fell off her immediately.


Those were scary years and scarier to look back on now, aware of dangers I wasn’t aware of then. We all made it through them safely, in large part because of Princess, my aging collie. I always felt that Princess was an angel in disguise sent down from heaven to help me take care of and protect my little brothers and sisters. Finally, my mother actually moved across the state, and after a couple of weeks alone, my father’s family came and took us to live with them on the farm. We were now safe, and I think it was no coincidence that Princess slipped away in her sleep soon after that.

Princess, the dog I could never forget, morphed into Lady for the Skeet Bannion series. Do you have a childhood pet you will always remember? What was your favorite childhood dog?

You can find out more about Linda and read an excerpt of Every Last Secret at her website. You can friend her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter.