Ceremonial Cycles: Book Two of the Norzona Quartet

The second of Northern Arizona's major ethnic groups, the Native Americans primarily of the

Hopi and Navajo Indian tribes, are the focus of this second novel of Will Michelet's "Norzona Quartet."

This novel revolves around the intersecting lives of its three principal characters: Paul Tse, born of a Hopi

mother and a Navajo father in Tuba City near the border of the Reservations for those two tribes north

of Flagstaff; Gloria, his wife and a member of the Tohono O'odham Tribe near Tucson, whom he met

while a student at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff.; and Paul's contemporary and friend Wayne

Lomaheftewa who, though without a college degree, becomes a charismatic religious leader across the

Hopi Reservation.

When Paul graduates from the University of Arizona law School and returns home with his wife

and their kids to work for the Hopi General Counsel's Office, the relationship between Paul and Wayne

explodes into a controversial murder that is tried in the Tucson federal court. Then, however, the trial's

surprising conclusion allows the sacred Hopi annual cycle to continue into the future.

The story itself plays out against the backdrop of this brilliant Hopi ceremonial cycle performed

each year for more than the last millennium. It allows one through this book to gain a deeper sense of

how the Hopi have survived and flourished on their three mesas in northeast Arizona.