Book Review: Zia Summer, Book #1 in the Sonny Baca Mystery Quartet by Rudolfo Anaya

Anglo and Chicano ancestries, legal and revolutionary commitments, modern and traditional expressions, and modest and upscale societies exert influences upon Albuquerque, Bernalillo County’s governmental seat and New Mexico’s mile-high city at 5,312 feet (1,619.09 meters). They find super-brutal convergences in draining blood from:

• human bodies in honor of Aztec sun-feeding traditions and etching onto navels the four-direction, four-element, four-ray, four-season sun symbol of Zia Pueblo traditions; and
• slaughtered cattle bodies and removing reproductive parts.

Private investigator Sonny Baca gets paid $20.00 when maternal relative Tía Delfina’s (Aunt Dolphin) daughter Gloria Dominguez becomes the second victim of blood-drained, lilac-scented body-carving in Albuquerque’s pricey Northeast Heights after the previous year’s same-aged Dorothy Glass, architect’s widow and Sims property resident. 

Sonny has suspects to clear or collar with great-grandfather Elfego’s .45-caliber single-action Colt. Delfina intends upon Frank Dominic paying, as:

• Gloria’s decade-long skirt-chasing husband;
• mayoral candidate using Gloria's descent from Don Juan Domínguez de Mendoza (1631 – 1685?), Don Juan de Oñate y Salazar (1550 – June 3, 1626), and Diego de Vargas Zapata y Luján Ponce de León y Contreras’ (1643 – 1704); and
• $2,000,000 life insurance beneficiary.

Means join opportunity for:

• Ashley, Frank’s lover and Sandia developer Jerry Anderson’s daughter;
• Leroy Brown, fired five-year-tenured gardener;
• Marisa Martinez, four-year mayor;
• Akira Morino, high-tech entrepreneurial father of Gloria’s unborn child;
• Antony Pájaro, Waste Isolation Pilot Plant opponent;
• Raven, livestock-poaching Sandia commune leader near La Cueva; and
• Veronica Worthy, fired housekeeper. 

Gloria’s death and Zia suns keep overlapping with:

• Black Mountain, Elida, La Cueva, Picacho, Quemado, Ramah, Tierra Amarilla, Tucumcari, Wagon Mound, White Sands equinox/solstice sacrifices;
• downtown, La Joya, northwest and Four Hills, Piñon Ridge, Sandia East Estates, uptown divisions;
• Estancia, north, south valley developments;
• high-level plutonium waste-loaded trucking, Los Alamos to Carlsbad; and
• Kirtland Air Force Base mysteries.

Gloria’s $100,000 from Akira and University of New Mexico Russian specialist Peter Dubronsky’s widow, English-, French-, German-, Polish-, Russian-speaking Tamara, lead Sonny through mazes to the perpetrator. So Zia Summer makes culturally enriching, educationally entertaining adventures possible, thanks to:

• Rudolfo Anaya, author;
• Marion Ettlinger, portrait photographer;
• Giorgetta Bell McRee, book designer;
• Andrew Newman, jacket designer/illustrator; and
• Warner Books, publisher. 

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

satellite image of Albuquerque, with the Rio Grande on left/west, in central New Mexico
Imagery by NASA and/or the US Geological Survey. Processed by Terra Prints Inc.: CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Albuquerque_satellite_map.jpg
*Replaced with better version of image
satellite image of Albuquerque, with the Rio Grande on left/west and Sandia Mountains on right/east, in central New Mexico
image captured Aug. 10, 1974, with NASA/USGS Landsat 1: USGS Landsat, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/usgslandsat/7796545134/

Zia Sun Symbol: red circle with four sets of four rays pointing in four directions
Highly esteemed Zia Sun Symbol is featured on the Flag of New Mexico.: Open Clip Art Library, Public Domain (CC0 1.0), via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_New_Mexico.svg

Indigenous Zia tribe, renowned for pottery and Sun Symbol, are centered on Zia Pueblo in northwestern New Mexico.
Zia reservation formation near San Ysidro, Sandoval County, northwestern New Mexico: Jared Tarbell from Youngsville, United States of America, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Zia_reservation_formation.jpg

Albuquerque and Sandia Mountains at sunset
panorama of Albuquerque; Monday, Sep. 1, 2008: Daniel Schwen (Dschwen), CC BY SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Albuquerque_pano_sunset.jpg

Moonrise over White Sands National Monument: iconic white sand dunes of gypsum crystals is featured in Rudolfo Anaya's "Zia Summer."
White Sands National Monument, south central New Mexico; Friday, Jan. 29, 2010, at 18:37:12: John Fowler (snowpeak), CC BY 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/snowpeak/48001473828/

Anaya, Rudolfo. 1995. Zia Summer. New York, NY: Warner Books, Inc.