Less Than Nothing: A novel of Anasazi strife

by Jeff Posey

“I really enjoyed it. It was well-written.” —Thomas Windes, thirty-seven-year veteran Anasazi archaeologist with the National Park Service.

This novel is partially set in the new Chimney Rock National Monument, Colorado.

When the Crab Nebula Supernova appeared on July 4, 1054, it hung like a tiny sun in the daytime sky.

What did the ancient ones of Chaco Canyon, N.M., do when they saw this unpredicted event?

Went into a cannibalistic frenzy.

It takes the combined efforts of the Chaco mob, a secret society of mad-as-hell women, and Tuwa with his band of orphans to try and make their world right again.

Tuwa wants little more than to crush the man, Pók, who killed his mother and grandfather and subjects his Anasazi Indian society to a form of terrorism that ultimately hastens its mysterious collapse four hundred years before Europeans arrived in North America.

He can hope to do it only with the help of a group of orphans hardened by their work as burden-bearers and bodyguards for a long-distance trader, and a secret society of women led by an albino who lurks in the shadow of the seat of power.

Along the way, Tuwa discovers his childhood sweetheart, Chumana, is the masked fortuneteller for the power brokers, and Pók, who is connected to his past almost more deeply than he can bear, tried to murder him at birth because his small size made him “less than nothing.”

Tuwa stands at the boundary of his homeland angry, determined, and frightened. The man he must face, Pók, is surrounded by hundreds of well-trained warriors at his command, and resides in a castle-like fortress of stone now known as Pueblo Bonito, deep in Chaco Canyon, northwestern New Mexico.

Three years before, to appease the spirit of the mysterious supernova star, so bright it could be seen during the day, Pók, with the blessing of the most prominent leaders, sacrifices hundreds of people. These include Tuwa’s beloved grandfather, the chief sky watcher, his childhood sweetheart, Chumana, and the albino woman who raised him. A long-distance trader essentially kidnaps him and other orphans to be burden bearers and bodyguards, and after a three-year march to the far south, Tuwa returns a young man leading a dozen hardened orphans. They resolve to exact as much vengeance as possible.

If you enjoy this book, you may also like “The Witchery of Forty-seven short dramas of Anasazi daily life,” by Jeff Posey, available in Kindle.

Includes excerpts from two novels by Jeff Posey, “Anasazi a novel of identity and speed,” and “The G.O.D. Journal,” available in Kindle and paperback.

224 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 28, 2011

About the author

Jeff Posey has a geology degree and worked as a petroleum geologist before he discovered the world of words.

Since then, he's been city editor of a metropolitan magazine, fiction editor for a national magazine, and then stumbled on his own ignorance: about business. So he earned an MBA, thinking that would solve everything. Ha! But it did give him the ability to see things that had been invisible before, such as how business and money truly work.

Now he writes short stories and novels, most of them inspired by his nearly two decades of research and fascination with ancient Southwest cultures (mainly the good ol’ Anasazi) and tied to his favorite area in and around Pagosa Springs, Colorado.

You’ll see allusions to the ancient ones in all of his work, which he describes as rather like a huge ongoing meta-novel.

To learn more, see http://JeffPosey.net/.