Emma Leaphorn, wife of Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, has returned to the reservation after years living in the city, but has not convinced her husband that they belong there. In failing health, Emma longs to be surrounded by the land of her ancestors, while Joe would feel more comfortable if she were closer to her doctors.

Born in Keshena, Wisconsin, actress Shelia Tousey was born and raised on both the Menominee and Stockbridge reservations. She began her career as a child, performing Native American dances. Upon graduating from the University of New Mexico, Tousey enrolled in the graduate acting program at New York University. Since then she has appeared on Broadway in Saint Plays: Wholly Jones/The Freak and In the Summer House and off-Broadway in Woyzeck and Efiginia and Other Daughters, for which she received a Drama Desk Nomination.

Tousey worked with writer-director Sam Shepard on Thunderheart, her motion picture debut, and again on the film Silent Tongue. Her other film roles include Backroads, Ravenous, All the Winters That Have Been, and Grand Avenue. Her television credits include the PBS production Living and Working in Space and the CBS movie of the week Medicine River, in which she starred. She narrated the American Masters episode Coming to Light: Edward S. Curtis and the North American Indians. In addition to her work as an actress, she has co-produced the romantic comedy Christmas in the Clouds.

In Hillerman's words: [Leaphorn] looked down at her as he buttoned his shirt, seeing an unaccustomed hollowness below the cheekbones, under the eyes. When he was away from her, her face would always have the same smooth roundness he'd noticed that day he first saw her -- walking with two other Navajo girls across the campus at Arizona State. Arizona State. His mother had buried his umbilical cord at the roots of a pi–on beside their hogan -- the traditional Navajo ritual for binding a child to his family and his people. But for Leaphorn, Emma was the tie. A simple physical law. Emma could not be happy away from the Sacred Mountains. He could not be happy away from Emma. He frowned down at her, seeing the flatness of her cheek, the lines under her eyes and at the corners of her mouth.

Skinwalkers, Chapter 10