Why would somebody be so hell bent on revenge that they would come back from the dead to get it? And the one constant for me that I could always think of was a mother. And so I just started developing this profile of Erma Singleton and what she would do, what her background was, all the things that were going against her. And so when I decided to do the opening scene, I knew for a fact that this lady would not be able to go on to the next world without having some kind of justice. I knew that Rita was going to be haunted. On developing the character of the ghosts that are seeking justice Emerson says growing up on the reservation, death was something that just wasn't mentioned. Rita is haunted by the ghosts of the crimes she documents, and she struggles to reconcile her work with Navajo taboos about death. Recently long-listed for the National Book Award for fiction, Shutter tells the story of a forensic photographer named Rita who, like Emerson, is a member of the Navajo Nation. I would carry the images that I had in my head with me for months.'Įmerson started writing down a memoir, but as she progressed with the manuscript, it morphed into her first novel.

'When I first started, I think those first two years of my job, it was tough for me. Once she had to ride a mule up a mountain for two hours with all her gear just to document a scene where someone got hurt. As a police department photographer in Albuquerque, N.M., she covered everything from car accidents to refinery explosions. She owns a production company with her husband called Reel Indian Pictures.īefore she became a novelist, Ramona Emerson spent 16 years documenting crime scenes.

Ramona Emerson is also a documentary filmmaker.

Shutter by Ramona Emerson