How does the author use imagery in the novel, Waterless Mountain?

One of the most valuable literary qualities of Waterless Mountain is its vivid imagery, derived from Armer's painting background and her firsthand experience of living among the Navajo. Whether it is a thunderstorm with "evil serpents of lightning across the sky," a girl's skirt that is "the color of the garnets on the ant hills and trimmed with a finger-wide band of deep blue," or the landscape's vivid blues, browns, greens, golds, and yellows, Armer's descriptions carry the reader into Navajo land and life.