Staff Picks
#BroaderBookshelf 2024 - Literary Fiction by Indigenous Authors
- Sara M.
- Thursday, January 18
Collection
Check out a book from this list to fulfill the 2024 Broader Bookshelf prompt "Read a book by or about someone from an Indigenous culture".
This list is part of the #BroaderBookshelf 2024 Reading Challenge. Find more lists here.
Ghost Lake
Published in 2020
"Pyromaniacs, vigilantes, mysterious phenomena, prehistoric beasts, cryptid species, grave robbers and ghosts... the stories of Ghost Lake feature a cast of interrelated characters and their brushes with the supernatural, creatures of Ojibwe cosmology, the Spirit World, and with monsters, both human and otherwise. Nathan Niigan Noodin Adler shows us that the precolonial past is not so distant, that history informs the present, and nothing is ever truly lost or destroyed, because the land remembers."-- Provided by publisher.
A Minor Chorus
A Novel
Published in 2022
"A debut novel from a rising literary star that brings the modern queer and Indigenous experience into sharp relief. In Northern Alberta, a queer Indigenous doctoral student steps away from his dissertation to write a novel. He is adrift, caught between his childhood on the reservation and this new life of the urban intelligentsia. Billy-Ray Belcourt's unnamed narrator chronicles a series of encounters: a heart-to-heart with fellow doctoral student River over the mounting pressure placed on marginalized scholars; a meeting with Michael, a closeted adult from his hometown whose vulnerability and loneliness punctuate the realities of queer life on the fringe. Amid these conversations, the narrator is haunted by memories of Jack, a cousin caught in the cycle of police violence, drugs, and survival. Jack's life parallels the narrator's own; the possibilities of escape and imprisonment are left to chance with colonialism stacking the odds. A Minor Chorus introduces the dazzling literary voice of a Lambda Literary Award winner and Canadian #1 national best-selling poet to the United States, shining much-needed light on the realities of Indigenous survival"-- Provided by publisher.
The Wildest Ride
Published in 2021
To save her family's ranch, Lillian Sorrow Island, determined to win the Closed Circuit rodeo tour with a million-dollar prize, goes up against an undefeated rodeo champion who is her biggest rival onscreen, but offscreen it is a whole different story.
The White Girl
A Novel
Published in 2022
"'A profound allegory of good and evil, and a deep exploration of human interaction, black and white, alternately beautiful and tender, cruel and unsettling.'-Guardian Australia's leading indigenous storyteller makes his American debut with this immersive and deeply resonant novel, set in the 1960s, that explores the lengths we'll go to save the people we love-an unforgettable story of one native Australian family and the racist government that threatens to separate them. Odette Brown has lived her entire life on the fringes of Deane, a small Australian country town. Dark secrets simmer beneath the surface of Deane-secrets that could explain why Odette's daughter, Lila, left her one-year-old daughter, Sissy, and never came back, or why Sissy has white skin when her family is Aboriginal. For thirteen years, Odette has quietly raised her granddaughter without drawing notice from welfare authorities who remove fair-skinned Aboriginal children from their families. But the arrival of a new policeman with cruel eyes and a rigid by-the-book attitude throws the Brown women's lives off-kilter. It will take all of Odette's courage and cunning to save Sissy from the authorities, and maybe even lead her to find her daughter. Bolstered by love, smarts, and the strength of their ancestors, Odette and Sissy are an indomitable force, handling threats to their family and their own identities with grace and ingenuity, while never losing hope for themselves and their future. In The White Girl, Miles Franklin Award-nominated author Tony Birch illuminates Australia's devastating post-colonial past-notably the government's racist policy of separating Indigenous children from their families, known today as the Stolen Generations-and introduces a tight-knit group of charming, inspiring characters who remind us of our shared humanity, and that kindness, hope, and love have no limits"-- Provided by publisher.
Probably Ruby
A Novel
Published in 2022
"When we first meet Ruby, a Métis woman in her 30s, she's a mess. She's angling to sleep with her therapist while also rekindling an old relationship with a man who was - let's just say - a mistake. As we will soon learn, however, Ruby's story is far broader and deeper than its rollicking, somewhat lighthearted first chapter. This is the story of a woman in search of herself, in every sense. Given up for adoption as an infant, Ruby was raised by a white couple who understand little of her Indigenous heritage. Growing up Ruby longs to know where she comes from and who her people are. This is the great mystery that hovers over her life and the book. Through a non-chronological structure, we meet the people who have shaped her life: her adoptive parents; her birth parents and grandparents; the men and women Ruby has been romantically involved with. All these characters form a kaleidoscope of stories, giving Ruby's life dignity and meaning"-- Provided by publisher.
Even As We Breathe
A Novel
Published in 2020
"Nineteen-year-old Cowney Sequoyah yearns to escape his hometown of Cherokee, North Carolina, in the heart of the Smoky Mountains. When a summer job at Asheville's luxurious Grove Park Inn and Resort brings him one step closer to escaping the hills that both cradle and suffocate him, he sees it as an opportunity. With World War II raging in Europe, the inn is the temporary home of Axis diplomats and their families, who are being held as prisoners of war. Soon, Cowney's refuge becomes a cage when the daughter of one of the residents goes missing and he finds himself accused of abduction and murder. Even As We Breathe invokes the elements of bone, blood, and flesh as Cowney navigates difficult social, cultural, and ethnic divides. After leaving the seclusion of the Cherokee reservation, he is able to explore a future free from the consequences of his family's choices and to construct a new worldview, for a time. However, prejudice and persecution in the white world of the resort eventually compel Cowney to free himself from larger forces that hold him back as he struggles to unearth evidence of his innocence and clear his name"-- Provided by publisher.
Terra Nullius
Published in 2018
"Terra Nullius (def): land belonging to no one; no man's land. 'Jacky was running. There was no thought in his head, only an intense drive to run. There was no sense he was getting anywhere, no plan, no destination, no future. All he had was a sense of what was behind, what he was running from. Jacky was running.' The Natives of the Colony are restless. The Settlers are eager to bring peace to their new home, and they have a plan for how to achieve it. They will tear Native families apart and provide re-education to those who do not understand why they should submit to their betters. Peace and prosperity are worth any price, but who will pay it? This rich land, Australia, will provide for all if only the Natives can learn their place. Jacky has escaped the Home where the Settlers sent him, but where will he go? The Head of the Department for the Protection of Natives, known to Settlers and Natives alike as the Devil, is chasing Jacky. And when the Devil catches him, Sister Bagra, who knows her duty to the ungodly, will be waiting for Jacky back at Home."--Back cover.
Perma Red
Published in 2002
"In the 1940s on the Flathead Indian Reservation, a reckless and stubborn young girl sets her life down a desperate path. Louise White Elk dreams of both belonging and escape, of discovering love and freedom on her own terms. But she is a red-haired, tough and beautiful temptation, and at least three men, each more dangerous than the other, want to control and possess her; Police Officer Charlie Kicking Woman, who struggles between worlds; charismatic but scary Baptiste, who refuses to yield to anyone; and Harvey Stoner, who owns nearly everything."--Jacket.
The Lost Journals of Sacajewea
Published in 2022
"From the award-winning author of Perma Red comes a devastatingly beautiful novel that challenges prevailing historical narratives of Sacajewea"-- Provided by publisher.
And then She Fell
A Novel
Published in 2023
"From the bestselling author of A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, a fierce, gripping novel about Native life, motherhood and mental health that follows a young Mohawk woman who discovers that the picture-perfect life she always hoped for may have horrifying consequences. On the surface, Alice is exactly where she should be in life: she's just given birth to a beautiful baby girl, Dawn; her ever-charming husband Steve--a white academic whose area of study is conveniently her own Mohawk culture--is nothing but supportive; and they've just moved into a new home in a wealthy neighbourhood in Toronto, a generous gift from her in-laws. But Alice could not feel like more of an imposter. She isn't connecting with Dawn, a struggle made even more difficult by the recent loss of her own mother, and every waking moment is spent hiding her despair from Steve and their picture-perfect neighbours, amongst whom she's the sole Indigenous resident. Even when she does have a moment to herself, her perpetual self-doubt hinders the one vestige of her old life she has left: her goal of writing a modern retelling of the Haudenosaunee creation story. At first, Alice is convinced her discomfort is of her own making. She has gotten everything she always dreamed of, after all. But then strange things start happening. She finds herself losing bits of time, hearing voices she can't explain, and speaking with things that should not be talking back to her, all while her neighbours' passive aggression begins to morph into something far more threatening. Though Steve urges her this is all in her head, Alice cannot fight the feeling that something is very, very wrong, and that in her creation story lies the key to her, and Dawn's, survival. . . . She just has to finish it before it's too late. Told in Alice's raw and darkly funny voice, And Then She Fell is an urgent and unflinching look at inherited trauma, womanhood, denial and false allyship, that speeds to an unpredictable--and unforgettable--climax"-- Provided by publisher.
The Round House
A Novel
Published in 2012
When his mother, a tribal enrollment specialist living on a reservation in North Dakota, slips into an abyss of depression after being brutally attacked, 14-year-old Joe Coutz sets out with his three friends to find the person that destroyed his family.
LaRose
Published in 2016
North Dakota, late summer, 1999. Landreaux Iron stalks a deer along the edge of the property bordering his own. He shoots with easy confidence - but when the buck springs away, Landreaux realizes he's hit something else, a blur he saw as he squeezed the trigger. When he staggers closer, he realizes he has killed his neighbor's five-year-old son, Dusty Ravich. The youngest child of his friend and neighbor, Peter Ravich, Dusty was best friends with Landreaux's five-year-old son, LaRose. The two families have always been close, sharing food, clothing, and rides into town; their children played together despite going to different schools; and Landreaux's wife, Emmaline, is half sister to Dusty's mother, Nola. Horrified at what he's done, the recovered alcoholic turns to an Ojibwe tribe tradition - the sweat lodge - for guidance, and finds a way forward. Following an ancient means of retribution, he and Emmaline will give LaRose to the grieving Peter and Nola. "Our son will be your son now," they tell them.
The Night Watchman
A Novel
Published in 2020
It is 1953. Thomas Wazhushk is the night watchman at the first factory to open near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a prominent Chippewa Council member, trying to understand a new bill that is soon to be put before Congress. The US Government calls it an 'emancipation' bill; but it isn't about freedom - it threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land, their very identity. How can he fight this betrayal? Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Pixie - 'Patrice' - Paranteau has no desire to wear herself down on a husband and kids. She works at the factory, earning barely enough to support her mother and brother, let alone her alcoholic father who sometimes returns home to bully her for money. But Patrice needs every penny to get if she's ever going to get to Minnesota to find her missing sister Vera. In The Night Watchman multi-award winning author Louise Erdrich weaves together a story of past and future generations, of preservation and progress. She grapples with the worst and best impulses of human nature, illuminating the loves and lives, desires and ambitions of her characters with compassion, wit and intelligence.
The Sentence
Published in 2021
A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading with murderous attention, must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.
Woman of Light
A Novel
Published in 2022
"1890: When Desiderya Lopez, The Sleepy Prophet, finds an abandoned infant on the banks of an arroyo, she recognizes something in his spirit and brings him home. Pidre will go on to become a famous showman in the Anglo West whose main act, Simodecea, is Pidre's fearless, sharpshooting wife, who wrangles bears as part of his show. 1935: Luz "Little Light" Lopez and her brother Diego work the carnival circuit in downtown Denver. Luz, is a tea leaf reader, and Diego is a snake charmer. One day, a pale-faced woman in white fur asks Luz for a reading, calling her by a name that only her brother knows. Later that night at a party downtown, Luz sees Diego dancing with this pale-faced woman, which results in a brawl with the local white supremacist group. Diego leaves town for cover and Luz is left trying to get justice for her brother and family. Merging two multi-generational storylines in Colorado, this is a novel of family love, secrets, and survival. With Fajardo-Anstine's immense capacity to render characters and paint vivid life, set against the Sange de Cristo mountians, Woman of Light is full of the weight, richness, and complexities of mixed blood and mica clay. It delights like an Old Western, and inspires the hope embedded in histories yet-told"-- Provided by publisher.
Crooked Hallelujah
Published in 2020
Tells the stories of Justine--a mixed-blood Cherokee woman--and her daughter, Reney, as they move from Eastern Oklahoma's Indian Country in the hopes of starting a new, more stable life in Texas amid the oil bust of the 1980s. However, life in Texas isn't easy, and Reney feels unmoored from her family in Indian Country. Against the vivid backdrop of the Red River, we see their struggle to survive in a world--of unreliable men and near-Biblical natural forces like wildfires and tornadoes--intent on stripping away their connections to one another and their very ideas of home.
Five Little Indians
Published in 2020
"Taken from their families when they are very small and sent to a remote, church-run residential school, Kenny, Lucy, Clara, Howie and Maisie are barely out of childhood when they are finally released after years of detention. Alone and without any skills, support or families, the teens find their way to the seedy and foreign world of Downtown Eastside Vancouver, where they cling together, striving to find a place of safety and belonging in a world that doesn't want them. The paths of the five friends cross and crisscross over the decades as they struggle to overcome, or at least forget, the trauma they endured during their years at the Mission. Fuelled by rage and furious with God, Clara finds her way into the dangerous, highly charged world of the American Indian Movement. Maisie internalizes her pain and continually places herself in dangerous situations. Famous for his daring escapes from the school, Kenny can't stop running and moves restlessly from job to job - through fishing grounds, orchards and logging camps - trying to outrun his memories and his addiction. Lucy finds peace in motherhood and nurtures a secret compulsive disorder as she waits for Kenny to return to the life they once hoped to share together. After almost beating one of his tormentors to death, Howie serves time in prison, then tries once again to re-enter society and begin life anew. With compassion and insight, Five Little Indians chronicles the desperate quest of these residential school survivors to come to terms with their past and, ultimately, find a way forward."-- Provided by publisher.
Dogside Story
Published in 2001
There is conflict in the whanau. The young man, Te Rua, holds a 'secret for life, the one to die with'. But he realizes that if he is to acknowledge and claim his daughter the secret will have to be told. 'The Sisters' are threatening to drag the whanau through the courts. But why? What is really going on?
In the Night of Memory
A Novel
Published in 2019
When Loretta surrenders her young girls to the county and then disappears, she becomes one more missing Native woman in Indian Country's long devastating history of loss. But she is also a daughter of the Mozhay Point Reservation in northern Minnesota and the mother of Azure and Rain, ages 3 and 4, and her absence haunts all the lives she has touched--and all the stories they tell in this novel. In the Night of Memory returns to the fictional reservation of Linda LeGarde Grover's previous award-winning books, introducing readers to a new generation of the Gallette family as Azure and Rain make their way home. After a string of foster placements, from cold to kind to cruel, the girls find their way back to their extended Mozhay family, and a new set of challenges, and stories, unfolds. Deftly, Grover conjures a chorus of women's voices (sensible, sensitive Azure's first among them) to fill in the sorrows and joys, the loves and the losses that have brought the girls and their people to this moment. Though reconciliation is possible, some ruptures simply cannot be repaired; they can only be lived through, or lived with. In the Night of Memory creates a nuanced, moving, often humorous picture of two Ojibwe girls becoming women in light of this lesson learned in the long, sharply etched shadow of Native American history.
The Road Back to Sweetgrass
A Novel
Published in 2014
Set in northern Minnesota during the days of the federal termination policy and the struggle for tribal self-determination, this novel follows Dale Ann, Theresa, and Margie, a trio of American Indian women, from the 1970s to the present, observing their coming of age and the intersection of their lives as they navigate love, economic hardship, loss, and changing family dynamics on the fictional Mozhay Point reservation. As young women, all three leave their homes. Margie and Theresa go to Duluth for college and work. There, Theresa gets to know a handsome Indian boy, Michael Washington, who invites her home to the Sweetgrass land allotment to meet his father, Zho Wash, who lives in the original allotment cabin. When Margie accompanies her, complicated relationships are set into motion, and tensions over "real Indian-ness" emerge. Dale Ann, Margie, and Theresa find themselves pulled back again and again to the Sweetgrass allotment, a silent but ever-present entity in the book. Sweetgrass itself is a plant used in the Ojibwe ceremonial odissimaa bag, containing a newborn baby's umbilical cord. Zho Wash tells the story of the first days of the allotment, when the Wazhushkag, or Muskrat, family became transformed into the Washingtons by the pen of a federal Indian agent.
A Song over Miskwaa Rapids
A Novel
Published in 2023
"Margie Robineau, fighting for her family's long-held allotment land, uncovers events connected to a long-ago escape plan, and the burial--at once figurative and painfully real--of not one crime but two. While Margie pieces the facts together, Dale Ann is confronted by her own tightly held secrets and the truth that the long ago and the now are all indelibly linked, no matter how much we try to forget"-- Provided by publisher.
The Removed
A Novel
Published in 2021
"Steeped in Cherokee myths and history, a novel about a fractured family reckoning with the tragic death of their son long ago--from National Book Award finalist Brandon Hobson"-- Provided by publisher.
Where the Dead Sit Talking
Published in 2018
"A spare, lyrical Native American coming of age story set in rural Oklahoma in the late 1980s. With his single mother in jail, Sequoyah, a fifteen-year-old Cherokee boy, is placed in foster care with the Troutt family. Literally and figuratively scarred by his unstable upbringing, Sequoyah has spent years mostly keeping to himself, living with his emotions pressed deep below the surface--that is, until he meets the seventeen-year-old Rosemary, another youth staying with the Troutts. Sequoyah and Rosemary bond over their shared Native American backgrounds and tumultuous paths through the foster care system, but as Sequoyah's feelings toward Rosemary deepen, the precariousness of their lives and the scars of their pasts threaten to undo them both"-- Provided by publisher.
People of the Whale
A Novel
Published in 2009
Raised in a remote seaside village, Thomas Witka Just marries Ruth, his beloved since infancy. But an ill-fated decision to fight in Vietnam changes his life forever: cut off from his Native American community, he fathers a child with another woman. When he returns home a hero, he finds his tribe in conflict over the decision to hunt a whale, both a symbol of spirituality and rebirth and a means of survival. In the end, he reconciles his two existences, only to see tragedy befall the son he left behind.
The Bone People
A Novel
Published in 1986
This unusual novel, set in New Zealand, concentrates on three people: Kerewin Holmes, a part-Maori painter who has chosen to isolate herself in a tower she built from lottery winnings; Simon, a troubled and mysterious little boy; and Joe Gillayley, the Maori factory worker who is Simon's foster father. Elements of Maori myth and culture are woven into the novel's exploration of the passions and needs that bind these three people together, for good or ill. It's not easy reading, but the story is compelling despite its stylistic eccentricities and great length. The novel is the winner of the Pegasus Prize.
Benevolence
A Novel
Published in 2022
A young Darug girl is sent to the Parramatta Native School after white settlers begin to arrive and claim the continent for the British Empire and flees, searching for a safe place in an increasingly unfamiliar world.
Birdie
A Novel
Published in 2016
A darkly comic and moving first novel about the universal experience of recovering from wounds of the past, informed by the lore and knowledge of Cree traditions. Bernice Meetoos, a Cree woman, leaves her home in Northern Alberta following tragedy and travels to Gibsons, BC. She is on something of a vision quest, seeking to understand the messages from The Frugal Gourmet that come to her in her dreams, but also driven by the leftover teenaged desire to meet Pat Johns, who played Jesse on The Beachcombers, because he is, as she says, a working, healthy Indian man. Bernice heads for Molly?s Reach to find answers but once there finds she is making the same poor decisions as always. Part road trip, dream quest and travelogue, the novel touches on the universality of women's experience, regardless of culture or race. Tracey Lindberg is a woman of Cree-Metis ancestry from northern Alberta. She has a doctoral degree in law as well as law degrees from the University of Ottawa, Harvard Law School and the University of Saskatchewan.
The Ghost Dancers
A Novel
Published in 2021
"Lyman "Bean" Wilson, a half-breed Nevada Indian and middle-aged professor of journalism at Lakota University in South Dakota, reassesses his life. The result is a string of family reconnections, sexual adventures, crises at work, pipe and sweat-lodge ceremonies, and-through his membership in the secret Ghost Dancers Society-political activism, culminating in a successful plot to blow the nose off of the George Washington statue on Mt. Rushmore"-- Provided by publisher.
Skins
A Novel
Published in 2022
"Skins is Adrian C. Louis's realistic novel of life on Pine Ridge Reservation, the story of two brothers--one a rez cop, the other an alcoholic--and their relationship with each other, with their people, with their environment"-- Provided by publisher.
Too Much Lip
A Novel
Published in 2020
"A gritty and darkly hilarious novel quaking with life-winner of Australia's Miles Franklin Award-that follows a queer, First Nations Australian woman as she returns home to face her family and protect the land of their ancestors. Wise-cracking Kerry Salter has spent her adulthood avoiding two things: her hometown and prison. A tough, generous, reckless woman accused of having too much lip, Kerry uses anger to fight the avalanche of bullshit the world spews. But now her Pop is dying and she's an inch awayfrom the lockup, so she heads south on a stolen Harley for one last visit. Kerry plans to spend twenty-four hours, tops, across the border. She quickly discovers, though, that Bundjalung country has a funny way of latching on to people-not to mention herchaotic family and the threat of a proposal to develop a prison on Granny Ava's Island, the family's spiritual home. On top of that, love may have found Kerry again when a good-looking white fella appears out of nowhere with eyes only for her. As the fight mounts to stop the development, old wounds open. Surrounded by the ghosts of their Elders and the memories of their ancestors, the Salters are driven by the deep need to make peace with their past while scrabbling to make sense of their present. Kerryjust hopes they can come together in time to preserve Granny Ava's legacy and save their ancestral land"-- Provided by publisher.
Just Like That
Published in 2020
Summer Hemlock never meant to come back to Omen, Massachusetts... But with his mother in need of help, Summer has no choice but to return to his hometown, take up a teaching residency at the elite Albin Academy, and work directly under the man who made his teenage years miserable. Professor Fox Iseya. Forbidding, aloof, commanding: psychology instructor Iseya is a cipher who's always fascinated and intimidated shy, anxious Summer. But that fascination turns into something more when the older man challenges Summer to be brave. What starts as a daily game to reward Summer with a kiss for every obstacle overcome turns passionate, and a professional relationship turns quickly personal. Yet Iseya's walls of grief may be too high for someone like Summer to climb until Summer's infectious warmth shows Fox everything he's been missing in life. Now both men must be brave enough to trust each other, to take that leap. To find the love they've always needed. Just like that.
Tauhou
Published in 2023
An inventive exploration of Indigenous families, womanhood, and alternate post-colonial realities by a writer of Māori and Coast Salish descent. Dear Grandmother, I am writing this song for you. I am a stranger in this place, he tauhou ahau, reintroducing myself to your land. Tauhou envisions a shared past between two Indigenous cultures set on reimagined versions of Vancouver Island and Aotearoa, two lands that now sit side by side in the ocean. Each chapter in this innovative novel is a fable, an autobiographical memory, a poem. A monster guards the cultural objects in a museum, a woman uncovers her own grave, another woman remembers her estranged father. On the rainforest beaches or the grassy dunes, sisters and cousins contend with the ghosts of the past - all the way back to when the first foreign ships arrived on their shores. In a testament to the resilience of Indigenous women, the two sides of this family, Coast Salish and Māori, must work together in understanding and forgiveness to heal that which has been forced upon them by colonialism. Tauhou is an ardent search for answers, for ways to live with truth. It is a longing for home, to return to the land and sea.
There There
Published in 2018
"Not since Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine has such a powerful and urgent Native American voice exploded onto the landscape of contemporary fiction. Tommy Orange's There There introduces a brilliant new author at the start of a major career. "We all came to the powwow for different reasons. The messy, dangling threads of our lives got pulled into a braid--tied to the back of everything we'd been doing all along to get us here. There will be death and playing dead, there will be screams and unbearable silences, forever-silences, and a kind of time-travel, at the moment the gunshots start, when we look around and see ourselves as we are, in our regalia, and something in our blood will recoil then boil hot enough to burn through time and place and memory. We'll go back to where we came from, when we were people running from bullets at the end of that old world. The tragedy of it all will be unspeakable, that we've been fighting for decades to be recognized as a present-tense people, modern and relevant, only to die in the grass wearing feathers." Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind in shame in Oakland. Dene Oxedrene is pulling his life together after his uncle's death and has come to work the powwow and to honor his uncle's memory. Edwin Frank has come to find his true father. Bobby Big Medicine has come to drum the Grand Entry. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield has come to watch her nephew Orvil Red Feather; Orvil has taught himself Indian dance through YouTube videos, and he has come to the Big Oakland Powwow to dance in public for the very first time. Tony Loneman is a young Native American boy whose future seems destined to be as bleak as his past, and he has come to the Powwow with darker intentions--intentions that will destroy the lives of everyone in his path. Fierce, angry, funny, groundbreaking--Tommy Orange's first novel is a wondrous and shattering portrait of an America few of us have ever seen. There There is a multi-generational, relentlessly paced story about violence and recovery, hope and loss, identity and power, dislocation and communion, and the beauty and despair woven into the history of a nation and its people. A glorious, unforgettable debut"-- Provided by publisher.
A Grandmother Begins the Story
Published in 2023
"The story of the unrivaled desire for healing and the power of familial bonds across five generations of Métis women and the land and bison that surround them"-- Provided by publisher.
A Council of Dolls
A Novel
Published in 2023
"A Council of Dolls is the moving and unforgettable new novel from PEN Award-winning Sioux author Mona Susan Powers, spanning four generations of Yanktonai Dakota women from the 19th century to the present day"-- Provided by publisher.
Son of a Trickster
Published in 2017
Everyone knows a guy like Jared: the burnout kid in high school who sells weed cookies and has a scary mom who's often wasted and wielding some kind of weapon. Jared does smoke and drink too much, and he does make the best cookies in town, and his mom is a mess, but he's also a kid who has an immense capacity for compassion and an impulse to watch over people more than twice his age, and he can't rely on anyone for consistent love and support, except for his flatulent pit bull, Baby Killer (he calls her Baby)--and now she's dead. Jared can't count on his mom to stay sober and stick around to take care of him. He can't rely on his dad to pay the bills and support his new wife and step-daughter. Jared is only sixteen but feels like he is the one who must stabilize his family's life, even look out for his elderly neighbours. But he struggles to keep everything afloat ... and sometimes he blacks out. And he puzzles over why his maternal grandmother has never liked him, why she says he's the son of a trickster, that he isn't human. Mind you, ravens speak to him--even when he's not stoned. You think you know Jared, but you don't.
Gardens in the Dunes
A Novel
Published in 1999
Indigo, an Indian girl from Arizona orphaned by U.S. Cavalry, is adopted by an intellectual white woman who takes her on a tour of Europe. A look at Western civilization through Indigo's eyes.
Ceremony
Published in 2016
"Part of the Penguin Orange Collection, a limited-run series of twelve influential and beloved American classics in a bold series design offering a modern take on the iconic Penguin paperback For the seventieth anniversary of Penguin Classics, the Penguin Orange Collection celebrates the heritage of Penguin's iconic book design with twelve influential American literary classics representing the breadth and diversity of the Penguin Classics library. These collectible editions are dressed in the iconic orange and white tri-band cover design, first created in 1935, while french flaps, high-quality paper, and striking cover illustrations provide the cutting-edge design treatment that is the signature of Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions today. Ceremony Almost forty years since its original publication, Ceremony remains one of the most profound and moving works of Native American literature--a novel that is itself a ceremony of healing. Masterfully written, filled with the somber majesty of Pueblo myth, Ceremony is a work of enduring power"-- Provided by publisher.
Noopiming
The Cure for White Ladies
Published in 2021
"In fierce prose and poetic fragments, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's Noopiming braids together humor, piercing detail, and a deep, abiding commitment to Anishinaabe life to tell stories of resistance, love, and joy"-- Provided by publisher.
This Town Sleeps
A Novel
Published in 2020
"Set on an Ojibwe reservation in northern Minnesota, This Town Sleeps is the story of Marion Lafournier, a gay Ojibwe man, and his search for meaning in a town he cannot seem to leave. When he begins a romance with a closeted former high school classmate Shannon, Marion finds himself struggling to connect with the volcanic and unstable man. One night, while roaming the dark streets of Geshig, Marion unknowingly brings to life a dog from underneath the elementary school playground. The mysterious revenant leads him to the grave of Kayden Kelliher, an Ojibwe basketball star who was murdered at the young age of seventeen, and whose presence still lingers in the memories of the townsfolk. While investigating the fallen hero's death, Marion discovers family connections and an old Ojibwe legend that may be the secret to unraveling the mystery he has found himself in." --Provided by publisher.
The Half-white Album
The Covers
Published in 2023
This powerful debut collection explores lives lived between worlds. Sylvester masterfully weaves together fiction, poetry, and nonfiction to give readers a poignant though fractured view of her characters' lives, their loves, and their struggles. Told from the perspective of an urban Native, the work details a journey led by the nomadic band, the Covers. It is an experience meant to heal generational trauma and bring back into the light people who may otherwise be forgotten. At its heart, The Half-White Album is a healing ceremony of the author's own creation, a process grounded in music that celebrates what it is to be human and imperfect and to love imperfectly.
Split Tooth
Published in 2018
"A girl grows up in Nunavut in the 1970s. She knows joy, and friendship, and parents' love. She knows boredom, and listlessness, and bullying. She knows the tedium of the everyday world, and the raw, amoral power of the ice and sky, the seductive energy of the animal world. She knows the ravages of alcohol, and violence at the hands of those she should be able to trust. She sees the spirits that surround her, and the immense power that dwarfs all of us. When she becomes pregnant, she must navigate all of this." -- cover description.
Motorcycles & Sweetgrass
Published in 2021
"A story of magic, family, a mysterious stranger . . . and a band of marauding raccoons. Otter Lake is a sleepy Anishnawbe community where little happens. Until the day a handsome stranger pulls up astride a 1953 Indian Chief motorcycle - and turns Otter Lake completely upside down. Maggie, the Reserve's chief, is swept off her feet, but Virgil, her teenage son, is less than enchanted. Suspicious of the stranger's intentions, he teams up with his uncle Wayne - a master of aboriginal martial arts - to drive the stranger from the Reserve. And it turns out that the raccoons are willing to lend a hand."-- Provided by publisher.
Maud's Line
Published in 2015
"Eastern Oklahoma, 1928. Eighteen-year-old Maud Nail lives with her rogue father and sensitive brother on one of the allotments parceled out by the U.S. government to the Cherokees when their land was confiscated for Oklahoma's statehood. Maud's days are filled with hard work and simple pleasures, but often marked by violence and tragedy, a fact that she accepts with determined practicality. Her prospects for a better life are slim, but when a newcomer with good looks and books rides down her section line, she takes notice"--Dust jacket flap.
Stealing
A Novel
Published in 2023
"Since her mother's death, Kit Crockett has lived alone with her grief-stricken father, spending lonely days far out in the country tending the garden, fishing in a local stream, and reading Nancy Drew mysteries from the library bookmobile. One day when Kit discovers a mysterious and beautiful woman has moved in just down the road, she is intrigued. Kit and her new neighbor Bella become fast friends. Both outsiders, they take comfort in each other's company. But malice lurks near their quiet bayou and Kit suddenly finds herself at the center of tragic, fatal crime"-- Provided by publisher.
Medicine Walk
Published in 2015
Franklin Starlight's comfort in solitude and experience in the wilderness make him appear wise beyond his sixteen years. But when his ailing father, Eldon, summons him back to town, Franklin's sense of duty clashes with the deep resentment he feels for his father's many years of absence and neglect. Finding Eldon near death after years of drinking, Franklin grudgingly agrees to help carry out his father's final wish to be buried in the warrior way, deep in the rugged and starkly beautiful outback of British Columbia. The ride into the wilderness transforms both men as Eldon shares his life story. From an impoverished childhood to his shell-shocked return from combat in the Korean War, Eldon depicts a hard life, a life common to many of his people. But along with these desolate recollections, Eldon shares his life's fleeting moments of happiness and hope. And in telling his story, he offers his son an inheritance he never could have imagined.
Dream Wheels
Published in 2016
"Champion bull-rider Joe Willie Wolfchild is poised to win the most sought after title in rodeo when a devastating accident at the National Finals leaves his body and ambitions in tatters. Unsure of what else to do, he retires to the panoramic family ranch, Wolfcreek, to mend. Claire Hartley and her fifteen-year-old son Aiden have nearly been torn apart by abusive boyfriends and an unjust world when a friend sends them to the Wolfchild ranch. Thrown together by terrible circumstance, it appears Aiden andJoe Willie have more in common than their childhoods would suggest. After a rocky start, they strike a deal: Aiden will help Joe Willie repair his '34 Ford V8 pickup if the former champion teaches the city kid how to ride a bull. As Wagamese reveals theirstory, he rewrites the history of the American cowboy. In taut, muscular prose, Wagamese explores how independence, self-determination, and a return to cultural tradition can heal body, mind, and community"-- Provided by publisher.
Two Old Women
An Alaska Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival
Published in 2013
Based on an Athabascan Indian legend passed along for many generations from mothers to daughters of the upper Yukon River Valley in Alaska, this is the suspenseful, shocking, ultimately inspirational tale of two old women abandoned by their tribe during a brutal winter famine. Though these women have been known to complain more than contribute, they now must either survive on their own or die trying. In simple but vivid detail, Velma Wallis depicts a landscape and way of life that are at once merciless and starkly beautiful. In her old women, she has created two heroines of steely determination whose story of betrayal, friendship, community, and forgiveness "speaks straight to the heart with clarity, sweetness, and wisdom" (Ursula K. Le Guin).
Fools Crow
Published in 2011
"The 25th-anniversary edition of "a novel that in the sweep and inevitability of its events ... is a major contribution to Native American literature." (Wallace Stegner) In the Two Medicine Territory of Montana, the Lone Eaters, a small band of Blackfeet Indians, are living their immemorial life. The men hunt and mount the occasional horse-taking raid or war party against the enemy Crow. The women tan the hides, sew the beadwork, and raise the children. But the year is 1870, and the whites are moving into their land. Fools Crow, a young warrior and medicine man, has seen the future and knows that the newcomers will punish resistance with swift retribution. First published to broad acclaim in 1986, Fools Crow is James Welch's stunningly evocative portrait of his people's bygone way of life."-- Provided by publisher.
Jonny Appleseed
A Novel
Published in 2018
Off the reserve and trying to find ways to live and love in the big city, Jonny Appleseed, a young Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer, becomes a cybersex worker who fetishizes himself in order to make a living. Jonny's world is a series of breakages, appendages, and linkages - and as he goes through the motions of preparing to return home for his step-father's funeral, he learns how to put together the pieces of his life. Jonny Appleseed is a unique, shattering vision of Indigenous life, full of grit, glitter, and dreams.
The Yield
A Novel
Published in 2020
"Knowing that he will soon die, Albert 'Poppy' Gondiwindi takes pen to paper. His life has been spent on the banks of the Murrumby River at Prosperous House, in the fictional Australian town of Massacre Plains. Albert is determined to pass on the language of his people, the indigenous Wiradjuri tribe, and everything that was ever remembered by the ancestors. He finds the words on the wind. August Gondiwindi has been living in Europe for ten years when she learns of her grandfather's death. She returns home for his burial, wracked with grief and burdened with the memories of life in poverty before her mother's incarceration, her hometown's racism against her people, and the mysterious disappearance of her sister when they were kids that changed August's life forever. Her homecoming is bittersweet as she confronts the love of her kin and news that Prosperous is to be repossessed by a mining company. Determined to make amends, she endeavors to save their land - a quest that leads her to the voice of her grandfather and into the past, the stories of her people, the secrets of the river. Told in three masterfully woven narratives, THE YIELD is a celebration of language and an exploration of what makes somewhere "home." It is not just the story of a people and a culture dispossessed, but a joyful reminder of what was and what endures. It is a powerful reclaiming of Indigenous language, storytelling and identity, offering hope for the future."-- Provided by publisher.
Carpentaria
Published in 2009
Set in the precariously settled coastal town of Desperance, Carpentaria is the unforgettable portrait of the powerful Phantom family, leader of the Westend Pricklebush people, and its battles with old Joseph Midnights renegade Eastend mob on the one hand, and the white officials of Uptown and the neighbouring Gurfurrit mine on the other. By turns operatic and surreal, Wrights stunning and richly imagined storytelling is a blend of myth and scripture, farce and politics. Her extraordinary characters Elias Smith the outcast saviour, the religious zealot Mozzie Fishman, the murderous mayor Stan Bruiser, the moth-ridden Captain Nicoli Finn, the activist and prodigal son Will Phantom, and above all, the rulers of the family, the queen of the rubbish-dump and the fish-embalming king of time, Angel Day and Normal Phantom stride like giants in this storm-swept world.
The Swan Book
A Novel
Published in 2016
"An inventive, cacophonous novel about an Aboriginal girl living in a future world turned upside down--where ancient myths exist side-by-side with present-day realities. Oblivia Ethelyne was given her name by an old woman who found her deep in the bowels of a gum tree, tattered and fragile, the victim of a brutal assault by wayward local youths. These are the years leading up to Australia's third centenary, and the woman who finds her, Bella Donna of the Champions, is a refugee from climate change wars that devastated her country in the northern hemisphere. Bella Donna takes Oblivia to live with her on an old warship in a polluted dry swamp and there she fills Oblivia's head with story upon story of swans. Fenced off from the rest of Australia by the Army, its traditional custodians left destitute, the swamp has become "the world's most unknown detention camp" for Indigenous Australians. When Warren Finch, the first Aboriginal president of Australia invades the swamp with his charismatic persona and the promise of salvation, Oblivia agrees to marry him, becoming First Lady, a role that has her confined to a tower in a flooded and lawless southern city. In this multilayered novel, winnter of the Australian Literature Society's Gold Medal, Wright toys with the edges of the world we live in to offer us an intimate portrait of the realities facing Aboriginal people. We meet talking monkeys, genies with doctorates, spirit-guiding swans, and a whole cast of characters drawn from myth and legend and fairy tales. Through symbolism and a dazzling linguistic dexterity--the blending of words and phrases from high and low culture, from English, Aboriginal languages, French, and Latin--Wright beautifully demonstrates how the power of the human imagination can set us free"-- Provided by publisher.
White Horse
Published in 2022
Some people are haunted in more ways than one. Old denim jackets, ripped jeans, Stephen King novels, and the occasional beer at the White Horse Lounge have defined urban Indian Kari James's life so far. But when her cousin Debby finds an old family bracelet that once belonged to Kari's mother, it inadvertently calls up both her mother's ghost and a monstrous entity, and her willful ignorance about her past is no longer sustainable. Haunted by visions of her mother and hunted by this mysterious creature, Kari must search for what happened to her mother all those years ago. Her father, permanently disabled from a car crash, can't help her. Her Auntie Squeaker seems to know something, but isn't eager to give it all up at once. Debby's anxious to help, but her controlling husband keeps getting in the way. Kari's journey towards a truth long-denied by both her family and law enforcement forces her to confront her dysfunctional relationships, her spiritual beliefs, and her desire for the one thing she's always wanted but could never have"-- Provided by publisher.
A Tale of Two Shamans = Ga SGáagaa Sdáng = Ga SG̲aaga Sding
Published in 2018
"A contemporary retelling of an ancient Haida story, featuring the Japanese-inspired illustrations of an artist trained in the Haida tradition. The story - retold in an English text by the artist, based on ancient oral tradition - is accompanied by three translations, into the three remaining dialects of the Haida language: the Old Masset, Skidegate and Kaigani (Alaskan) dialects, approved by Elders fluent in these dialects."--Provided by publisher.