The Darkness Rolling
Seaman Yazzie Goldman comes home from service during World War II to Monument Valley, Utah, to find John Ford making another film near Yazzie’s mother and grandfather’s trading post. The famous director immediately hires Yazzie – at Hollywood rates – to work as a bodyguard for actress Linda Darnell. Yazzie’s mother isn’t thrilled that her son, having been gone for so many years, has come home only to be gone some more. She’ll get over that, doubtless, but what neither she nor Yazzie suspects is that someone else, a man recently freed from prison, has also returned, simultaneous with Yazzie’s homecoming. This man calls himself the Buzzard, and he’s been nursing a grievance against Yazzie’s mother and grandfather for a quarter century.
Between them, authors Win and Meredith Blevins (a married couple) have 35 or more books to their name, and they live in Blanding, in Utah’s spectacular red rock country. Also, Win Blevins used to work as a film critic. So it’s no surprise that they’ve written a skillfully written book with a filmmaking situation featuring the landscape they love. The novel’s pacing is just right and there’s suspense aplenty. I was surprised and pleased by the time spent on relationships in The Darkness Rolling. It was fun to watch Yazzie be a part of one of Ford’s famous Monument Valley westerns. Still, I wished that there had been more period detail. Substitute Clint Eastwood for John Ford, and the story could have been that of a young man coming home from the Gulf War or Afghanistan.
