I loved his novels and I agree about the PBS renditions. The actor who played Joe Leaphorn was especially memorable. I read this in an obit about him this morning:
The teacher at Sacred Heart's one-room school house was rumored to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan, so Tony's parents sent him and his brother, Barney, to St. Mary's Academy, a school for Potawatomie Indian girls near Asher, Okla. It was at St. Mary's that he developed a lifelong respect for Indian culture — and an appreciation of what it means to be an outsider in your own land.
   What wonderfully inclusive parents these were for the 1930's.