Elsa knows you have to keep your hands in the sled so they’re not sliced by sharp ice. She’s learning to sew gákti, her Sámi family’s traditional clothes. She’s even big enough to surprise her parents by skiing to the reindeer corral and feeding the animals by herself. But one day, when she gets there, in the opening of this unusual and immersive novel, Nástegallu, the reindeer her father has given her as her own, has been murdered. More terrifying, the killer stares at Elsa and draws his finger across his throat to show that she’d better keep her mouth shut. The lonely terror triggered by this gruesome event seeps into Elsa’s bones and shapes her life for the decades spanned by the book. As a frightened child and later a fledgling Sámi-rights activist, Elsa stands on the tenuous border between the indigenous reindeer herders who are trying to maintain their traditional way of life and the more modern Swedes around them who treat the “bloody Lapps” (Lapp is a slur) as either entitled leeches on the state or quaint artifacts of pastoral innocence. Always at the center are the reindeer and the serial killing of them, a destruction of Sami food, transport, heat, and sense of self. A reindeer serial killer? I know. But this is one of those books that will draw you in, teach you, and stay with you. Sámi journalist Laestadius’s adult debut, this book won Sweden’s Book of the Year prize in 2021 and is being adapted into a film that will be on Netflix in 2024
