A Thief of Time (with sixteen original water colors by Ernest Franklin)

New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1988. First edition. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good +. SIGNED by Ernest Franklin. 209pp. Octavo [24 cm] Beige cloth covered boards with a deep red ink stamped title on the spine. Illustrated endpapers (map) of Anasazi Country. Head of spine negligibly bumped. A couple of the illustrations bleed through to the other side of the page. ***Franklin's early attempts at producing his illustrations with watercolor wrinkled the pages, as is seen in this book to varying degrees (most are only just slightly wrinkled). Later, he switched to creating them with color pencil. In the dust jacket, with very faint rippling to the panels. Housed in a plain light gray cloth covered slipcase in fine condition. Tony Hillerman has not signed this copy. Leaphorn and Chee mystery set in prehistoric sites in Chaco Canyon and elsewhere in the Four Corners area. Nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel (1988). Hieb A10a.

Sixteen original water colors by Ernest Franklin illustrate the text. The illustrations vary in size, but all sixteen are rich in color and subject. Nine of the illustrations are signed by Franklin. This is the first of the Hillerman/Franklin limited editions produced by bookman Ernie Bulow of Buffalo Medicine Press and Ernest Franklin. These Hillerman books were done in small numbers, and each had a different original piece of artwork drawn or water-colored into the book itself. This copy is special, in that it has 16 original watercolors, as opposed to just one. The exact number of books produced with 16 original illustrations is unknown, but there were not many. It is also a prototype of the special editions that Ernie Bulow and Ernest Franklin would go on to create together.

Prize-winning Navajo artist Ernest Franklin (1942-2010) illustrated Tony Hillerman's Navajo mysteries for years. He was from Twin Lakes, New Mexico. He grew up traditionally, herding sheep and tending to the family's livestock. Franklin began drawing at an early age. He worked in many different mediums, including traditional Navajo silversmithing, rawhide braiding and leather carving, both welded and cast sculpture, ceramic pieces, pencil, oil, conte crayon and pen and ink, however it is his lively, colorful watercolors of cowboy scenes that were his personal favorites. (Reference: University of New Mexico University Libraries: https://ehillerman.unm.edu/taxonomy/term/109#sthash.NvdIRTIo.dpbs)

A beautiful, very limited edition of this Leaphorn and Chee mystery.