David Heska Wanbli Weiden - Wisdom Corner

David will be joined in conversation by author E.A. Aymar.

To be held at Solid State Books on H St. NE

From the award-winning author of Winter Counts comes a new thriller about life—and death—on the Rosebud Indian Reservation.

Virgil Wounded Horse is desperately trying to escape his past as a hired vigilante on the Rosebud Indian Reservation. But when a legendary figure from the reservation is murdered, Virgil is forced to return to the job. Making matters more complicated, threats are coming from the Pine Ridge 705—a street gang from a neighboring reservation who want to expand their reach into Rosebud—and Mitch Gagnon, a shady politician who will stop at nothing to gain more power.

With a heated tribal council election looming, as well as new revelations regarding past injustices at the local Native boarding school, the stakes grow even higher. Will Virgil find the justice he’s seeking before it’s too late?

David Heska Wanbli Weiden, whose writing “melds the gritty realism of Dashiell Hammett with the lyricism of Tommy Orange” (O, The Oprah Magazine), once again brings us a tour de force of crime fiction—and an expansive look at Native American life in a shifting world.

David Heska Wanbli Weiden, an enrolled citizen of the Sicangu Lakota nation, is the author of Winter Counts, which won the Anthony Award for Best First Novel, the Thriller Award for Best First Novel, and was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best First Novel. He received the PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship and is the recipient of fellowships and residencies from MacDowell, Ucross, Sewanee, and Tin House. A professor of English and Native American and Indigenous Studies at Stony Brook University, he lives in New York and Colorado with his family.

Booklist wrote of E.A. Aymar’s most recent thriller, When She Left, “This would appeal to fans of Elmore Leonard…with high-stakes violence tempered by humor and disarmingly sympathetic antiheroes.” In 2025, When She Left was chosen by PEN/Faulkner as one of three books for their prestigious DC Reads program. His previous thriller, No Home for Killers, received praise from the New York Times, Kirkus, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and was an instant Amazon Bestseller. A former regular contributor to The Washington Post, his work has received multiple nominations for the Anthony award.

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