In so many ways, Tony Hillerman lives on. That's good news not only to the ink-stained wretches he was one of and counted as his friends and fellow writers, but also to his legions of readers — for whom detectives Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee are as real as their incomparable surroundings.

Hillerman died in the fall of last year — but the honors for the great novelist of the Four Corners are still coming in.

Last weekend at the Southside Branch Library, a tall, rugged red stone erected in his name was the scene of blessings and song from Navajo medicine man Tommy Pino. The stone stands in the library's Tony Hillerman Teen Patio — fittingly named, since his many novels are eminently readable, and suitable, for readers of all ages.

The south-side site was his family's choice, over downtown's main library and convention center, largely because from that patio there's a glimpse of the Sandia Mountains Hillerman had come to love once he'd left his native Oklahoma to make New Mexico his home.

He was a wire-service reporter who went on to become editor of The New Mexican, all the while honing his many ideas for storytelling on a grander scale.

Most of his novels involved mystery-solving on America's greatest spread of reservations, but the settings he portrayed in words were what captivated most readers: The land John Ford conveyed to moviegoers was brought to Hillerman's readers in equally majestic form.

And about the same time the library ceremonies were held, his daughter, Anne, a longtime writer in her own right, and her husband, the noted photographer Don Strel, have come out with a spectacular and mercifully sized book called Tony Hillerman's Landscape: On the Road with Chee and Leaphorn. The book, under way when Tony was still alive, has gotten good reviews and a strong reception at book-signings here and in Arizona. So besides his ongoing residence on bookshelves here and around the country, there'll likely be some of him on coffee tables as well ...

The line extended between Navajo Mountain and Short Mountain — into the Nokaito Bench and onward into the bottomless stone wilderness of the Glen Canyon country and across Lake Powell Reservoir ... Leaphorn wound his way through the sandstone landscape, his khaki-uniformed figure dwarfed by the immense outcroppings and turned red by the dying light. From Listening Woman.

Who knows how many readers Hillerman lured from their Río Grande Corridor homes onto the many-colored mesas and through the canyons of the Colorado Plateau? His daughter's writing, known around the region for its sensitivity, and Strel's photography, some of it worthy of Ray Manley, Jack Dykinga and Joseph and David Muench, will enrich travelers' memories.

Much as those shooters' works stand out, Hillerman country is comparatively easy to portray photographically — the bigger the negatives, the better. But words, too often, fail; as Thomas Mann said of the Mountain West, it overwhelms writers. But Hillerman somehow struck a balance between his deep and thoughtful protagonists and the terrain they trod — and Anne Hillerman does him proud.

In Tony Hillerman's work, there was true beauty, which gives him a measure of immortality — reaffirmed in these latest testimonials.