Book Review – Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child’s “Thunderhead”

Recently I finished reading Thunderhead, a thriller written by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.

Thunderhead is an independent book and not part of their main storyline involving FBI Special Agent Pendergast.  However, two of the characters in this book can be found in the Pendergast series of books.

First published in 1998, Thunderhead takes readers into the wilderness of the American West, and history (and superstition and mythology) involving American Indians.  When reading this book, you may be surprised to discover how little you know about the ancient history of the Native Americans.

Thunderhead begins in New Mexico as anthropologist Nora Kelly visits her childhood home and discovers a dated letter from her father in the family’s mailbox.  The only problem is that Nora’s father vanished years ago when he was exploring the desert and searching for a fabled Native American city of Quivira, a hidden city that is allegedly made of gold.  He disappeared when Nora was a young girl.

To make matters worse, when Nora is inside of her family’s abandoned home, she’s viciously attacked by two unknown creatures.  They’re scared away when Nora’s neighbor, Teresa, makes an appearance, but she spots them again when she tries to drive away from the house.  Before Teresa saved her, Nora heard one of the creatures mention that it wanted the letter.

After her frightening encounter at her family’s old home, Nora returns to her apartment in Santa Fe and analyzes her father’s old letter.  The letter provides detailed notes about what seems like the lost Anasazi city of Quivira.  The only problem is that her father was exploring southern Utah’s canyon country, a region with literally hundreds of winding canyons.  She’s going to need more detailed information about her father’s path before she can hope to form an expedition to retrace his route.

Nora goes to the Santa Fe Archaeological Institute (her place of employment as an anthropologist) and accesses detailed maps, but the maps aren’t detailed enough for her needs.  In order to determine her father’s route, she’s going to need more information.  That’s when Nora turns to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and convinces Peter Holroyd to help her with her cause.  Peter is able to help Nora create a work order and have an orbiting Space Shuttle use its sensors to take detailed pictures of southern Utah.  Peter then steals the information from the JPL, and he and Nora match the information in the letter to a real route through the canyon.

Knowing that the details in her father’s letter are accurate, Nora takes the letter and the maps from the JPL back to the Institute and to the office of Dr. Ernest Goddard, Chairman of the Board at the Santa Fe Archaeological Institute.  Dr. Goddard is sold on the information and agrees to quickly form an expedition into the region.  Time is a factor as late summertime thunderstorms are liable to create flash floods and not only destroy evidence in the canyons, but kill everybody in the expedition as well.

The expedition into southern Utah will be led by Nora Kelly.  This is her project and she’s the person in charge.  Going with her are Peter Holroyd from the JPL (his cooperation in getting and analyzing the maps was based on him being a member of the expedition, something that he has dreamed about since childhood), Dr. Aaron Black, a geochronologist, Dr. Enrique Aragon, the medical doctor and paleopathologist, Roscoe Swire, a cowboy in charge of the expedition’s horses, Luigi Bonarotti, the camp manager and cook, Bill Smithback, a high-profile journalist, and Dr. Sloane Goddard, Ernest Goddard’s daughter.

While she’s away on the expedition, Nora Kelly has her brother, Skip Kelly, stay at her apartment for his own safety.  She fears that the creatures that attacked her at her family’s old home may try to strike again.  Since he’s unemployed, she also arranges a data entry job for him at the Institute.  It’ll help keep Skip focused and it may even lead into a career for him.

Accessing the path to the city of Quivira is going to be a harsh experience.  It won’t be possible to fly to the site on a helicopter as there’s nowhere safe to land.  It’s also impossible to scout for the city from the air as the only clues leading to the city are hidden on the ground.  The expedition is going to have to travel on horseback and make their way through the winding canyons.  But first, to reach the start of the trail, they’re going to have to take a barge across Lake Powell in northern Arizona.

After successfully crossing the lake, the group rides on horses and makes their way through the maze of canyons.  Nora follows her father’s notes, but most of the trek seems more like guessing as there’s little evidence of Anasazi in that area.  After a harrowing trek up a mountain (a segment that causes a few horses to fall off a cliff and die), Nora and Sloane scout ahead in the Chilbah Valley and discover the hidden city of Quivira.  It’s not made entirely of gold as foretold in the legends, but it is a massive city tucked into the side of a valley.  The city is so well hidden that it’s virtually impossible to see it from both the ground and the air.

It’s soon discovered that not everything within the city of Quivira meets the expectations of the anthropologists.  While the city itself is an incredible discovery, Sloane is obsessed with pressing further and exploring deeper into the complex.  She’s not satisfied with the priceless pottery and other artifacts.  She wants to continue and seek the gold that is rumored to be in the city.  Her attitude slowly convinces others to join with her search.

Meanwhile, back in New Mexico, the unknown creatures return to Nora’s old family house and brutally kill her neighbor, Teresa.  After the police question Skip Kelly about his involvement with the house, the creatures use black magic to try to kill him.  They disable the brakes on his car and cause him to be in a terrible crash, but Skip survives with only minor cuts and bruises.  The creatures then head into southern Utah and begin to stalk the expedition.

One day after some of the team’s horses are brutally murdered, Nora Kelly and Bill Smithback venture off in search of the killers.  They end up meeting John Beiyoodzin, a local Native American who frequently spends time alone in the desert.  He was keeping track of the expedition though he was not the person who killed the horses.  When he hears about how the horses were killed, John warns Nora and Bill that they are in terrible danger of an evil presence —- skinwalkers.

John Beiyoodzin is a local medicine man who specializes in mythology.  He proceeds with telling Nora and Bill about the local Nankoweap wolfskin runners (a.k.a. skinwalkers), people who have used witchcraft to gain evil powers.  The path itself to becoming a wolfskin runner involves murdering a person that you love, having sex with the dead body, and then mutilating the corpse and using parts of it to make Alchi’bin lehh tsal —- incest corpse powder.  With that corpse powder they can modify their own bodies and enhance their strength and senses, and they can also carry out terrible acts on unsuspecting people.

As far as the connection between the wolfskin runners and the city of Quivira, John Beivoodzin claims that it’s because “. . . the city was a place of sorcery, cruelty, witchcraft, sickness, and death.”  Of course, this goes against what the history books have said about the Anasazi people and their peaceful lifestyle.

Back in the city of Quivira, the two skinwalkers sneak into the campground and use the corpse powder on Peter Holroyd.  He becomes incredibly ill and dies shortly later.  When the team packs up their camp and starts the process of returning to civilization with Peter’s body, the skinwalkers summon a tremendous thunderstorm which creates a deadly flash flood in the canyon.  Enrique Aragon and the remaining horses are killed, and the group is split apart and separated.

Sloane Goddard takes command of her small group composed of Aaron Black, Luigi Bonarotti and Roscoe Swire.  They continue excavating the city and discover a second city hidden deeper in the cliff.  Unknown to them, the walls within the second city are covered in a deadly fungus.  Both Aaron and Luigi inhale the fungus and become deathly ill from the bacteria.  Both of them ultimately die though the skinwalkers finish off their weakened bodies.  Roscoe Swire is also killed by the skinwalkers when he sets out and tries to set an ambush for them.

When Nora and Bill return to Quivira, Sloane is shocked as she believed that they were both killed in the flash flood.  She basically admits that she tried to murder them so that she could take command of the expedition and all of the glory that would go with the discovery.  Sloane then uses a gun and tries to shoot and kill Nora, but she misses.  Bill had been badly injured during the flood, so he’s left behind as the skinwalkers try to attack Nora and Sloane.

The two women are forced to work together to use whatever they can find in the city to fight off the skinwalkers.  The skinwalkers chase them to the upper levels, and ultimately Sloane is killed after tumbling with a skinwalker off a cliff.  Using her wits and the help from the return of John Beivoodzin, Nora and John save Bill and defeat the skinwalkers.  They make it out of the canyon and back to safety.

John later reveals that the skinwalkers were really two brothers that ventured into the canyon not too long ago.  There was a third brother who located the dead body of Nora’s father, and he was the one who decided to mail the letter and he thought that the letter belonged to the family.  That brother was murdered by his other brothers, and the two brothers used the corpse powder to become witches.  They wanted to keep the location of Quivira a secret, so they tried to attack Nora Kelly and stop the expedition.  When that failed they had to attack the expedition itself and prevent anybody from leaving the canyon alive.

It’s also revealed that the sorcery and witchcraft actually originated from the Aztec people.  The story implies that the Aztecs considered the Anasazi as inferiors and tried to use witchcraft to rule over and control them.

Thunderhead ends with Nora Kelly and her brother Skip travelling into the desert with Bill Smithback and John Beivoodzin.  John leads them to the grave containing the body of Nora and Skip’s father.  The dry desert air has helped preserve the body and most of his clothing and belongings.  When they visit the grave, Nora reads the rest of the letter that her father wrote to his two children.

So is Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s Thunderhead a good story?

Yes.

For the most part this was an interesting story and a rousing adventure deep into the heart of the American west.  A story like this reminds us that there are still vast wildernesses in this country and the ancient history to go along with it.  The true history of America doesn’t begin with Christopher Columbus and the Pilgrims, but rather thousands of years earlier when the first migrants crossed into the continent.

Thunderhead‘s strengths lie with Nora Kelly and the expedition itself, and, of course, the skinwalkers and their witchcraft including the thunderstorm and flash flood.  Oddly enough, it feels like the story reaches a plateau when the expedition reaches Quivira.  The story tends to drag on for a little bit as the city is explored and the characters debate their discoveries and how it ties into the history of the Indians.  This part is a little boring, but the story improves after the horses are murdered and Nora and Bill meet John Beivoodzin.  The part with them sitting around the campfire and listening to John tell his scary story about the skinwalkers is pretty creepy.

Personally, I would have liked to have a darker story involving the skinwalkers.  What’s there is good, and it works in this story, but John’s tale about them leaves room for more evil in this book.  He hints that there’s an even darker valley nearby, but we don’t get to hear about it.  It’s possible that John was just talking about the valley with Quivira and I just misunderstood it as the names of the mountains and valleys tended to run together at times.

Anyway, Thunderhead is still an entertaining book.  It’s thrilling, it’s creepy, there’s an evil presence, and the book has the spirit of adventure right here in the continental U.S.  The book has inspired me to learn more about the Anasazi and other people that inhabited America during ancient times.