David Weiden brings Lakota crime thriller ‘Wisdom Corner’ to Morristown, Oct. 10

By Marion Filler

Author David Weiden can transport readers to a different world, enthralling and educating them along the way.

Wisdom Corner, a crime thriller set on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, is personal for Weiden. He is an enrolled citizen of the Sicangu Lakota nation, whose ancestors have lived on Rosebud for generations.

Weiden will share insights into this world on Saturday, Oct. 10, at the 2026 Morristown Festival of Books, at 1:30 pm in the Presbyterian Church in Morristown’s Parish House. Admission is free.

The novel took about six years to write and is a sequel to the prize-winning Winter Counts, as it follows protagonist Virgil Wounded Horse, a Lakota vigilante and enforcer who lives on Rosebud. A very tough guy.

“Virgil is completely a figment of my imagination,” says Weiden whose home in Denver is a seven-hour drive from Rosebud, where he spent summers as a child. He visits regularly and knows it well.

“I have never met a hired vigilante on my reservation, but I do know that these men exist. No question I’ve heard about people like him,” Weiden acknowledges.

Even so, Weiden understands Virgil, not only from their shared cultural backgrounds but also by hardscrabble childhoods and a mutual desire for a better life. Virgil lived on the reservation. Weiden grew up in Swansea/Elyria, one of the roughest neighborhoods in Denver.

But Weiden excelled academically. He became an attorney, a political scientist and novelist who cloaks crime and injustice in a good story.

Virgil takes a different path — yet also wants to expose wrongdoing. He is someone who, for lack of support from the authorities, is out to deliver justice when the legal system falls short.

Both men go about doing it their own way.

The longstanding problem is that crime on reservations is not efficiently handled, by tribal governments or by the F.B.I, which is designated to investigate it.

“In my view,” says Weiden, “the F.B.I. is not providing enough resources to criminal justice on reservations. For example, there are only two F.B.I. agents that work at Rosebud (pop. approximately 10,000) and there are hundreds of felony crimes every year, so they can’t get to all of them.” They’re focusing on other areas, he says.

Virgil Wounded Horse knows that all too well. He works outside the official legal system, and becomes embroiled in chasing down a cartel that is bringing drugs to the reservation — entangling his nephew.

Weiden, 63, is a professor of English and Native American and Indigenous Studies at Stony Brook University, and lives in Brooklyn. When school is not in session, he heads back to his home in Denver and to Rosebud.

“I take my children to my reservation for religious ceremonies and I also go because I own some property there. Some of it is Trust land, meaning I don’t have complete rights to it. Parts of my land I cannot sell or even enter because it’s leased by the government to ranchers.”

Although he will not commit to a third book in the series, Weiden does plan to continue writing about Native American issues.

“Because I was raised Native, it is central to my identity and I feel that I’m doing some good in the world,” he explains. He believes that with the exception of Oklahoma and New Mexico, most people in western states have never met a Native American.

“The ignorance about Native American issues, I can tell you, is fairly uniform across the United States.” Weiden’s talk on Saturday should be an eye-opener.

David Heska Wanbli Weiden,
Wisdom Corner
Presbyterian Church Parish House
Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026
1:30 to 2:20 pm
Admission: Free