Shutter

(Paperback)

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Longlisted for the National Book Award This blood-chilling debut set in New Mexico's Navajo Nation is equal parts gripping crime thriller, supernatural horror, and poignant portrayal of coming of age on the reservation. Rita Todacheene is a forensic photographer working for the Albuquerque police force. Her excellent photography skills have cracked many cases-she is almost supernaturally good at capturing details. In fact, Rita has been hiding a secret- she sees the ghosts of crime victims who point her toward the clues that other investigators overlook. As a lone portal back to the living for traumatized spirits, Rita is terrorized by nagging ghosts who won't let her sleep and who sabotage her personal life. Her taboo and psychologically harrowing ability was what drove her away from the Navajo reservation, where she was raised by her grandmother. It has isolated her from friends and gotten her in trouble with the law. And now it might be what gets her killed. When Rita is sent to photograph the scene of a supposed suicide on a highway overpass, the furious, discombobulated ghost of the victim-who insists she was murdered-latches onto Rita, forcing her on a quest for revenge against her killers, and Rita finds herself in the crosshairs of one of Albuquerque's most dangerous cartels. Written in sparkling, gruesome prose, Shutter is an explosive debut from one of crime fiction's most powerful new voices.

Reviews

Praise for Shutter

Longlisted for the National Book Award
Finalist for the 2023 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel
Finalist for the 2023 PEN Open Book Award
Winner of the Lefty Award for Best Debut Mystery Novel
Nominated for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel
The Boston Globe Best Books of 2022
An NPR Best Book of 2022
A New York Public Library Best Book of 2022
CrimeReads Best Horror Novels of 2022
A South Florida Sun-Sentinel Best Mystery Books of 2022
An Orange County Register Best Mystery Books of 2022
Outside magazine 10 Best Books of 2022
Book & Film Globe Best Books of 2022
An ABA Indie Next Pick for August 2022
An ABA Indie Next Gift Guide Selection
A PLA LibraryReads Pick for August 2022
A Publishers Weekly Editors' Top 10 Mystery for Fall
A CrimeReadsMostAnticipatedCrimeBook of Summer
A Scribd Best Book of August

A perfect blend of thriller, horror, and coming-of-age story.
The Boston Globe

Haunting.
The New York Times Book Review

This story is way more than a thriller, more than a ghost story. It is one of family and history, of culture, of past and present, of walking set boundaries and of discovering oneself.
USA Today

This paranormal police procedural is unusual and multilayered, but what stands out is the gorgeously expressive and propulsive first-person storytelling, which is split between Ritas present and her past. A former forensic photographer herself, the pictures Emerson paints with words are as vivid as they are brutal.
Oprah Daily

Shutter is utterly unputdownable. It is a haunting thriller, written with exquisite suspense, and filled to the brim with beautiful writing, through the lens of cameras and memoryan ode to photography, written acrossthe landscapes of the Navajo Nationand cityscapes of New Mexico, about what it means to witness and capture death, be captured by it, told unflinchingly by an author who knows what she is doing on every page. It is fun, and funny, and chilling. This is a story that wont let you go long after you finish, and you wont want it to end even as you cant stop reading to find out how it does.
Tommy Orange, author of There There

A unique perspectiveon New Mexico and native culture.
New Mexico PBS

[Emerson] brings a contemporary Din protagonist to brilliant life. Rita vibrates off the page with grit, vulnerability, and a set of keen observational powers that allow her to rise above violence, corruption, and family trauma. Heres hoping her crime-solving career is a long one.
New Mexico Magazine

Shutter defies easy genre classification . . . Yes, this is a mystery with elements of horror, but the novel also plumbs Ritas relationship with her grandmother, who raised her on the Navajo reservation hours from the city where she now works. The result, featuring one of the best first chapters Ive ever read (admittedly, not for the faint of heart), leaves us with so much more than phantasmagoric thrills.
Book & Film Globe

This mystery-crime-thriller is beautifully and chillingly rendered.
Ms. Magazine

Rita is a starkly compelling figure, and she, combined with the cacophonous voices of the dead, makes this debut novel a strange and potent brew.
AirMail

Superbly crafted.
The Colorado Sun

Emerson touches upon subjects that Din often are reluctant to raise or discuss in intimate circles, and does so in ways that allows for conversation about death, the possibilities of a spirit world, gifts of second sight, and witchery and evil . . . Yet, we must acknowledge and work through because it is reality, it is more so a coming-of-age story.
Jennifer Dez Dennetdale, Navajo Times

Emerson immediately establishes herself as a new talent with her engrossing debut Shutter, which combines a story of Navajo culture, coming of age, mysticism, family ties and crime detection . . .Emerson is definitely an author to watch.
South Florida Sun-Sentinel

The thriller read of the summerDark Winds meets The Sixth Sense.
Indian Country Today

Gritty.
Outside Magazine

Emerson creates a powerful tension between Ritas photographic documentation of dead bodies at crime scenes and the spiritual desperation of their souls . . .The title of the novel captures photographys fluidity, at once referring to the blink of a cold, mechanical eye and suggesting the near homonym,shudder,the visceral chill when in the presence of the supernatural.
Ploughshares

[Emerson] navigates family and crime to create a captivating mystery and page-turner.
Deschutes Bulletin

Get ready for the next wave of Indigenous thrillers! Shutter is a soulful and mesmerizing exploration of the paranormal, set against the backdrop of New Mexico and the Navajo Nation. Written in tough, edgy prose, this book grabs you by the shoulders and refuses to let you leave. Ramona Emerson is a welcome new voice in Native literature.
David Heska Wanbli Weiden, author of Winter Counts

Beautiful, imaginative prose with a sharp edge. Shutter is a powerful and supernatural debut. I've never seen a better rendering of gifts and power. This work understands the spirit world and how it does not relent until we bear witness. Ramona Emerson is a badass, propulsive, exacting and true storyteller.
Terese Mailhot, author of Heart Berries

This debut, spellbinding, gritty and beautiful, laced with body parts, hauntings, humor, residential school trauma and a lot of bloody noses, is, in the end, the story of a young girl who fell in love with a camera, and followed that camera into a life. Layered, depth-plumbing, radically suspenseful, deeply felt, Shutter moves between making your blood run cold and warming your heart, so quickly, smoothly and stealthily you wont know what hit you.
Pam Houston, author of Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country

In her thrilling debut,Shutter, Ramona Emerson allows us a glance into not just one world, but many. Bridging the divide between a grounded procedural mystery and a paranormal thriller, this novel is a feast for fans of both genres and brings us a protagonist well want to visit again and again.
Stuart Neville, author of The Ghosts of Belfast

The mysterious, the paranormal, and the historical come together in Romona Emerson's riveting debut . . . Emerson'spowerful new voice brings a breath of fresh air to the crime fiction genre.
Cowboys & Indians

Chilling.
Arizona Daily Star

A truly stunning ghost story-cum-crime thriller.
The Muskogee Phoenix

Hard to put down.
The Joplin Globe

Shutter is an extraordinary debut novel, a stunning mix of crime, character study, and the supernatural, told in propulsive prose against the landscape of the Navajo Nation. Itll leave you gaspingand desperate to read what the author does next.
Neil Nyren, BookTrib

Loved this book! . . . [Shutter]has a mixed tone of being a dark-ish procedural and also a beautiful book about with her relationship with her grandmother. I would absolutely read another book following Rita and also anything else Ramona Emerson writes.
BookRiot

Shutter is impossible to classify, gorgeously written and ingeniously constructed. An indigenous crime scene photographer who hears the voices of the dead finds her careful existence shattered by the pleas of a murdered young woman to find her killer.
CrimeReads

Ramona Emerson's awesome debut, Shutter, had me totally mesmerized from cover to cover. Not since Stuart Neville's supernatural thriller, The Ghosts of Belfast, have I seen a more perfect blend of ghostly horror and mystery.
SFReview

Taut as a bowstring.
Kittling Books

This debut trilogy-starter showcases top-notch storytelling.
Booklist

Emerson presents an indigenous coming-of-age story blending forensics and the supernatural with a haunted heroine facing relentless evil.
This is Horror

Emerson, a filmmaker, is a stylish writer who has deftly combined plot, character, and setting into a compelling montage.
Reviewing the Evidence

Satisfyingly explores forensic photography and Din culture within the New Mexico landscape, surrounded by the voices of some very engaging ghosts.
BookPage

Crime fiction fans will relish this keenly balanced paranormal page-turner and piquant coming-of-age yarn.
Publishers Weekly

Emersons striking debut follows a Navajo police photographer almost literally to hell and back . . . A whodunit upstaged at every point by the unforgettably febrile intensity of the heroines first-person narrative.
Kirkus Reviews

Author Bio

Ramona Emerson is a Dine writer and filmmaker originally from Tohatchi, New Mexico. She has a bachelor's in Media Arts from the University of New Mexico and an MFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts. After starting in forensic videography, she embarked upon a career as a photographer, writer, and editor. She is an Emmy nominee, a Sundance Native Lab Fellow, a Time-Warner Storyteller Fellow, a Tribeca All-Access Grantee and a WGBH Producer Fellow. In 2020, Emerson was appointed to the Governor's Council on Film and Media Industries for the State of New Mexico. She currently resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she and her husband, the producer Kelly Byars, run their production company Reel Indian Pictures. Shutter is her first novel.