If she closes her eyes, she can see even further.

Just last week, she described the Elephant Feet Buttes in Navajo Nation territory, 400 miles away in northeastern Arizona.

The buttes are the visual reference points for Hillerman’s latest novel, “Lost Birds,” and her ability to see them so clearly is just one of the reasons the novel became a New York Times bestseller last spring.

“If I want to take readers to a place they’ve never been, I have to show them what it looks like,” she explained simply. “My father was great at that. I’m no Tony Hillerman, so I try to find places he never wrote about and talk about them.”

Anne’s father was, of course, one of the biggest stars of American literature in the 1990s and early 2000s, best known for his series about detectives Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police.

The Hillerman franchise is now in the capable hands of Anne, who divides her time between Tucson and Santa Fe. Since her father’s death in 2008, she has written nine novels, all nine of which have spent some time on the bestseller list.

In addition, she is now a consultant for a television series based on the Hillermans’ books. Season 3 of “Dark Winds,” starring Jessica Matten, will air on AMC in March.

Hillerman has been a part-time Tucsonan since 2021 and feels very much at home here.

“I have to say, I love Tucson,” she said. “It’s such a diverse and interesting place. When my first novel came out, I was invited to the book festival. After that, every time I went there, it felt more and more like the place I was meant to be.”

Of course, it helped that she has a new grandchild just a few miles down the road.

“The only downside,” she laughed, “is that I like to write in the morning, and most of the year, mornings are the best time to be outside.”

Especially now that she is a bestselling author herself, it is interesting to learn how Anne Hillerman’s career follows that of her father.

A journalist by profession, he became editor of the Santa Fe New Mexican and later head of the journalism department at the University of New Mexico.

Anne also chose journalism and took two of his courses at UNM.

Like her father, she became a writer, but she never thought for a second about becoming a novelist.

“We never talked about it,” she said. “When he became famous, I was already well into my career as a reporter. Books were his thing. I was happy with what I was doing in Santa Fe.”

When their father died, Anne assumed that Leaphorn and Chee would find other work. But then…

“My late husband and I had published a book about landscapes in the Southwest, places my father had described in his books,” Anne recalled. “It came out the year after my father died, and we did a little book tour to places like libraries and Rotary clubs to talk about it. People kept coming up to me and saying how much they loved those books. How much they missed those characters. Many of them asked if anyone would continue the series.

“After a while, I realized that I missed those books too. I didn’t want them to end either, and if anyone could continue my father’s series, it was me.”

After all, she had read all of her father’s books at least twice.

“We always talked about them at dinner,” Anne said. “It was as if Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee were part of our family.”

She slowly began to warm to the prospect of continuing the series herself.

She spoke to her mother, Marie, and called her father’s editor, Carolyn Marino at HarperCollins.

“They both said I should try it,” Anne said, “so one day I sat down and started writing a book. You know, it’s quite difficult to learn how to write a novel while you’re writing a novel.”

Fortunately, Hillerman had already made two important decisions that proved crucial to her success.

First, she decided to give one of her father’s supporting characters – the intrepid and thoroughly modern Bernadette Manuelito – a central role as a crime solver. Second, she wanted something dramatic to happen in the first 50 pages.

“I thought if I wanted to continue the series – and not be Tony Hillerman, which I could never be – I had to think of ways to do my books differently,” she said. “I had always liked Bernie in his books, so she became my thread. Through her I could develop a woman’s perspective.”

When it came to early drama, Anne was pragmatic. “I thought Dad’s readers might test me for a chapter or two, but it wouldn’t take me long to get their attention.”

On page 3 of the first book, “Spider Woman’s Daughter,” Leaphorn is shot in the head outside a local restaurant. Bernadette witnesses the crime. Check. Check.

Spider Woman’s Daughter was released in 2013 and quickly hit the bestseller list, and Hillerman was on her way.

Over the past decade, Anne has introduced a number of new characters into the mix. She has updated newly emerging elements of police science.

“I’m also nicer to the FBI than he is,” she said, “but none of that in any way diminishes the great talent my father had in creating the show. I’m still impressed by his creativity.”

Anne’s tenth book, Shadow of the Solstice, is well underway and is due out in April.

And beyond that? Anne Hillerman simply closes her eyes and looks at what comes into her field of vision.

• “Lost Birds” is a Navajo term for children who are adopted by non-Navajo families. In Hillerman’s latest book, a Lost Bird searches for his birth parents. The only clue is a photo of him as a baby with the Elephant Feet Buttes in the background.
• The paperback edition of “Lost Birds” will be released on January 28th.
• Hillerman credits her development as a writer to her father. When she was young, she showed him a sentence in her homework that read: Janey and her brother were sitting under a tree. “Papa suggested I make it a poplar tree. Then he wondered what the bark looked like. What did the leaves sound like? That was the blessing of having a father who was a writer.”