Second in Ramona Emerson’s planned trilogy about Navajo crime photographer Rita Todacheene, Exposure takes you on an intense ridealong with Rita, who uses her camera to meticulously and unflinchingly document the most gruesome crime scenes. You can think that the images themselves suggest clues to the commission of these murders, or you can accept Rita’s understanding, that the spirits of the dead are guiding her to see beneath the surface. Either way, you know she believes those ghosts are with her.
Her colleagues in the Albuquerque, New Mexico, police department are less-than-thrilled with her insights. After all, she’s not a cop. They like simple solutions and quickly closed investigations. To them, Rita is a troublemaker, and they don’t like her or her methods. Of course, labelling a woman crazy in order to dismiss what she says is an old, old story.
Recovering from a serious leg injury and required to obtain psychological counselling to combat her ‘ghosts,’ she hasn’t been required to document crime scenes lately. Instead, she’s been working in the office of the medical examiner, who isn’t one to dismiss her so lightly.
The story opens with Rita unexpectedly called out to a scene because the new photographer supposed to handle it is not up to the task. A mother, father and their six children have been shot to death. The police believe the oldest son, blood-spattered and found holding a gun, is the culprit. Although Rita is not supposed to be doing this on-scene work, someone has to, and the spirits of the children, one in particular, lead her to a different theory of the crime.
In parallel with Rita’s trials, alternating chapters recount the story of a man who, in childhood, witnessed the violent deaths of his family, followed by a back-breaking and spirit-quenching ordeal at a religious orphanage. Steeped in Catholicism, he’s an adult now, a lay brother doing outreach among the impoverished residents of Gallup, New Mexico. For many of the indigent people he encounters – alcoholic, too little food and shelter, and too much desperation – wintertime is a deadly trial. With terrifying and unshakable faith, he helps them to their heavenly reward – deaths that are too easily chalked up to exposure.
If some of the police officers believe, or prefer to believe, that Rita is unhinged, they don’t see that Brother Gabriel has most definitely gone around the bend. Inevitably, their paths will converge.
Meanwhile, the dead children torment Rita, affecting her physical and spiritual health, and she finally agrees to go home to her grandmother’s house on the reservation, north of Gallup. There, perhaps, she can start to heal. She doesn’t think much of the native rituals employed by her grandmother’s friend Mr Bitsilly, but she’s become too weak to refuse them. As the clouds over her spirit begin to lift, she’s asked by a female Gallup police detective to help figure out a set of murders in the town.
Ramona Emerson so effectively describes the starkly beautiful country and the uncompromising weather, which is a formidable antagonist in the plot, that you may need a hot cup of something as you read. She integrates the Native American traditions and beliefs into the modern tale in a way that gives science (the medical examiner), belief (the Navajo) and procedure (the police) their due – all three coming together in Rita. They are not always easily reconciled, and her struggles make for a unique and compelling story. I’m not personally a big believer in the supernatural, but I’m willing to acknowledge that some things happen that are unexplainable. One person’s ghost may be another person’s instinct or intuition. It’s Rita’s belief in the spirits that matters, though, and it’s bolstered by the fact that the spirits have never led her astray.
The quality and sensitivity of the writing is much to be appreciated, and it persists despite the sometimes brutal subject matter. Emerson’s debut novel, Exposure, was a 2023 nominee for numerous awards in the crime and mystery field, frequently named a Best Book of the Year, and received recognition from both the National Book Award and PEN Literary Awards programs. A Navajo (Diné) writer and filmmaker, she lives in Albuquerque.
Also see Where They Last Saw Her by Marcie R Rendon or the horror-crime mashup The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones.
Soho Crime
Print/Kindle
£10.99
CFL Rating: 5 Stars
