Mike Katko gives voice to women omitted from the historical record

Jan. 26—When Los Alamos resident Mike Katko set out to write his first novel, he initially planned to base it off the life of one of his heroes, Native American NFL player Jim Thorpe.

However, he ran into a problem.

"I was going to write the story around this Native American football team, and then I got about four or five chapters written," Katko recalls. "And I stopped, I reread it and reread it, and there's no women in the story."

He spoke to writer friend Jaiya John about the book, who suggested Katko base it around his own ancestral history.

That idea turned into Big Medicine Pretty Water, which is based on the life of his great-grandmother, Brigida Tolmich, a Native American woman abducted by a soldier at Fort Garland, Colorado, and his grandmother, Elvira Chavez, a tomboy who grew up on a ranch.

Katko never met Tolmich but remembers Chavez and the stories she told him, fondly recalling her childhood taking care of farm animals and riding horses.

REGIONAL FICTION

BIG MEDICINE PRETTY WATER by Mike Katko, Wilhemena Press, 2023, 232 pages

"When I started thinking about giving her voice, I really got into Native American heritage and Native American history and remembered a bunch of stories from my grandmother," he says. "A lot of them are in the book and kind of weaved around the story of the history of New Mexico."

He says he views the book as an homage to the countless women who have been left out of the historical record but nevertheless were instrumental in shaping the world we live in today.

"A lot of it is drawing inspiration from those voiceless women in history that had very important roles that are not given their due," he says.

The book begins in 1927 and follows the life of 14-year-old Alyssa Aleeray, who is being raised by her adoptive parents in Otowi Station after being abandoned at birth, wrapped in a Navajo blanket.

Alyssa is going on a hunting expedition with two of her relatives when her uncle is badly injured. Alyssa takes him to a nearby cabin but then has to figure out how to save both of their lives as a blizzard sets in.

From there, the novel charts Alyssa's fight for survival, jumping back in time to detail more of her family's life and the rest of the village, including menacing bootlegger Boss Walt, who smuggles liquor along the Chili Line.

"Pretty water" is the meaning of Alyssa's Indigenous name, and "big medicine" is something her adoptive father has always said she will attract, a concept that Katko equates to a form of divine intervention.

Katko says he's been drawn to writing since he was a kid but didn't find the time to pen his first novel until retirement, after a long career as a principal and teacher following time in the U.S. Armed Forces.

He published a book of poetry, Skies and Other Poems, in 2011 and then spent about a decade working on Big Medicine Pretty Water. The novel was published in December 2022 and was a finalist for a New Mexico Book Association award last year.

Los Alamos is almost indistinguishable in the public imagination from its Manhattan Project-era history, especially following last year's release of Christopher Nolan's blockbuster Oppenheimer. But as Katko's book shows, that's far from the region's only interesting era.

Prior to becoming home to the Secret City, the Pajarito Plateau was home to Native American communities who lived there for generations, as well as many Hispanic homesteading families. The land that became Los Alamos National Laboratory was an upscale ranch school for boys, and Otowi Station was a stop on the storied Chili Line narrow-gauge railroad.

Katko's book delves into this slice of history and more, with a fictional look at 1920s-era Northern New Mexico complete with bootleggers and bandits. He says the Prohibition Era is one of his favorite periods in American history.

"It's a really dynamic time in U.S. history, and one of the areas that's barely discussed is the southwestern United States," he says. "But there was a lot going on in New Mexico too at that time, especially with bootlegging."

Katko credited the Los Alamos Historical Society, the Mesa Public Library in Los Alamos, and Los Alamos National Laboratory in-house historian Alan Carr with helping him with the historical research he did for the book, along with other longtime residents of the region who shared their stories.

He's currently working on a second book of poetry along with a sequel to Big Medicine Pretty Water based on the life of a female member of the Manhattan Project and her exploits during WWII and the Cold War.

Although not as well known as the Manhattan Project era, the Cold War is ripe with stories from the lab, Katko says. His father-in-law was a longtime LANL employee who never discussed work, Katko says, including the one time he went away on travel and mentioned he had been on a nuclear submarine but refused to say more.

"He was just typical people who worked on the secret mission of Los Alamos," Katko says. "You carry the secret to your grave. It's an interesting place and an interesting piece of history."

Katko gives historical talks around the region based on the novel and says he's grateful for the reception it received in its first year.

"I don't think I can make a living on it yet," he says, "but for my debut novel to get any kind of award has me dancing around."