Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn is a fictional character created by the twentieth-century American mystery writer Tony Hillerman; he is one of two officers of the Navajo Tribal Police who are featured in a number of Hillerman's novels. The other officer is Jim Chee. Profile Personal life and education Joe Leaphorn's mother was Anna Gorman. His maternal grandfather was named Hosteen Klee Thlumie, called Hosteen Klee by young Leaphorn. As a child, Leaphorn was told the stories of the Navajo way of life (Listening Woman) by Thlumie. He was educated in the lower grades near home on the reservation, but sent to boarding school for the higher grades. He attended college at Arizona State University, where he completed a master's degree in anthropology, writing a thesis paper (Dance Hall of the Dead). In addition to anthropology, he has a lifelong interest in the many religions of American Indians and peoples of the world. In the earlier books of the series, Leaphorn is married to the love of his life, Emma. They have no children. In Skinwalkers, Leaphorn recalls meeting his wife at university. They have been married for thirty years, and he is preoccupied by her health problems, which he fears could be Alzheimer's disease but are diagnosed as arising from a brain tumor at the end of the novel. In A Thief of Time, when Leaphorn's wife has died a few months earlier, he reflects on his marriage. Leaphorn had been funded to continue in anthropology, get his doctorate, be a professor. Then he met Emma on the campus, and married her. He found a job to support them and keep them on the reservation where she wanted to live. He had the habit of trying out theories of people with her, a sharp observer, as he solved his cases, and he misses that immediately as he grieves the loss of her. In The Fallen Man it is revealed that Emma survived the surgery to remove the benign brain tumor; she died from a staph infection following the surgery, when Jim Chee is in the same hospital recovering from wounds sustained on duty. Emma and her relationship with her husband are revealed after she dies, in Joe's recollections of how he would talk with her, the decisions he made to please her, and how he feels guilty having another woman in the house, in Emma's room, as he muses in Hunting