A Grave Opening

The 2005 novel A Grave Opening was written by Jeane Harris and published by Bywater Books, a nationally recognized publisher of popular fiction aimed primarily at a lesbian audience. The book takes place in northeastern Arkansas and centers upon archaeologist and tracker Delia Ironfoot.

Author Jeane Harris was a professor of English at Arkansas State University (ASU) in Jonesboro (Craighead County) who, in addition to her academic writings, also wrote lesbian commercial fiction, with her first book Black Iris published in (1991) by Naiad Press, followed by Delia Ironfoot (1992). Black Iris was republished as The Magnolia Conspiracy in 2004 by Chenault and Gray of Little Rock (Pulaski County). Harris also contributed short fiction to the anthologies The Erotic Naiad and The Romantic Naiad.

A Grave Opening is not a direct sequel to Delia Ironfoot, which takes place in the Uinta Mountains of Utah, but features the same main character and references events from the first book. The book opens with Delia returning to the family farm near Crowley’s Ridge after her grandfather Hollis Whitaker is injured in a tractor accident. Hollis had, a few years prior, purchased land from the widow of Old Man Buck; this land had been desired by Bob Noland, a local businessman widely known to be mixed up in illicit gambling. Hollis had been driving a tractor on this land over a mound when the ground gave way, injuring him but also revealing a number of skeletons and artifacts. Delia goes with Hollis to look over the site and concludes that it is an Indian mound with a number of burials; she also finds a perfectly preserved head pot that represents the face of a Native American woman, the same face she had been seeing in her dreams.

Delia takes photographs of the site and artifacts and drives to Northeast Arkansas State University, a fictional stand-in for ASU, where she reports the burial site to the local office of the Arkansas Archeological Survey. There, she meets the local Survey officer, Katherine (Kate) Treadway, whose brother Buddy was a county prosecutor who disappeared after announcing an investigation into Bob Noland. Kate identifies the artifacts as likely Late Mississippian but recognizes some discrepancies with the motifs on the various works, hinting at unknown cultural influences. She facilitates getting Delia official permission to excavate the site and directs her to Colleen Redfield, a local physical anthropologist turned herbalist, who asks Delia about her dreams. While Delia is visiting with Colleen, apparent looters raid the site and shoot at Hollis and Kevin Whitaker, another relative. Earlier that day, Bob Noland had called Hollis with an offer to buy the property and had become angry when he refused. That night, Delia again has a dream about the figure she calls the Serpent Woman and a man called the Tattooed Serpent and realizes that the latter looks like a picture of Buddy Treadway she had seen.

The next day, while law enforcement and the county coroner are investigating the site, Delia and Kate have their own examination of the wider area and discover an extensive layer of ash in the strata, lending apparent credence to Delia’s dreams of a burning city. After the coroner leaves, the excavation begins. Hollis pulls an old trailer around so that Delia can have somewhere to stay near the dig site and keep watch over it at night. Visiting the university for supplies, Delia and Kate find Kate’s office ransacked and the artifacts stolen.

Delia returns to her trailer, where she and Kate have sex, before Delia wakes up during the night and sees men at the dig site with flashlights. Kate recognizes them as Bob Noland’s hired goons; soon, they also see the Whitaker farmhouse on fire. Delia manages to save her grandfather and Eunice, his sister who lives with him, but is injured in the process. Colleen shows up and offers to help take care of Delia while she recovers. The pothunters are arrested and turn on Noland, saying that he had set the fire as a diversion. After Colleen takes Delia home, she takes a nap and dreams about Buddy Treadway and realizes his body is in the mound.

When Delia wakes up, although she is still bruised, she and Colleen have sex, and while Colleen is sleeping that night, Delia goes out to inspect the mound. Kate has come to meet Delia, and together they go to the mound site, where they find Bob Noland bound and gagged. It turns out that Jim Kincaid, who works in the archaeology department at the university, had been funneling artifacts to Noland to pay off gambling debts and killed Buddy to cover up the relationship. Kincaid appears and shoots Noland, and Delia and Kate flee. Kincaid shoots Kate in the chest, killing her. Before he can kill Delia, Colleen shows up and shoots him dead.

At the end of the book, a distraught Delia leaves Arkansas to stay with her Navajo grandmother for a while in Mexican Hat, Utah, realizing, “If time healed at all, it would heal slowly.”

For additional information:
Harris, Jean. A Grave Opening. Ann Arbor, MI: Bywater Books, 2005.

Staff of the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas