With his debut novel, Winter Counts, David Heska Wanbli Weiden, PhD ’07, became one of just a handful of Native American writers ever nominated for an Edgar Award, the highest honor in the world of mystery fiction. Published in 2020, the back cover of the book features rave reviews from, among others, Tommy Orange and Stephen Graham Jones, two leading authors in the new wave of Native American writing that spans both genre and literary fiction. Weiden, an enrolled citizen of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and a former attorney who teaches Native American studies at Metropolitan State University of Denver, themed his book around the 1885 Major Crimes Act, which places felony crimes committed on a Native reservation under federal jurisdiction. His protagonist, Virgil Wounded Horse, is a vigilante trying to catch heroin dealers bringing drugs onto Native land.