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Indigenous

Review

Silent are the Dead

by Willy Williams

Mary Higgins Clark Award-finalist Rowell’s second mystery featuring Kiowa professional storyteller Mae “Mud” Sawpole opens in media res as she attends a cleansing and blessing ceremony at the Kiowa Tribe Museum in Carnegie, Oklahoma. As recounted in Never Name the Dead, Mud and her cousin Denny thwarted the attempted theft of the precious Jefferson Peace Medal given to the Tribe during the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804. Earlier in the day, they had also found a body and identified the killer. Now, it is time to return the medal to the museum and for Mud to go back to Silicon Valley, where her PR client has an important event. First, she needs to confront tribe chairman, Wyatt Walker, and tribe legislator Anna ManyHorse about the illegal fracking on her grandfather’s land but when the dealer involved in the theft of the Jefferson Peace medal and other Kiowa artifacts is murdered and a respected tribal elder falls suspect, Mud and Denny must race against the clock on the longest night of their lives (Mud has a noon flight to catch the next day!) to find the real culprits behind the fracking and the dealer’s killing. As a gay woman of mixed race, Mud has always felt a bit of an outsider (“a large minority in the Tribe didn’t think I was Kiowa enough…because I didn’t look Indian enough”), but her great-aunt’s wisdom and a ceremonial sweat bath set her on the path to finding the truth. Rowell, whose Kiowa name, “Koyh Mi O Boy Dah”, means “She Is A Traditional Kiowa Woman”, provides enough backstory for newbies to slip easily into the storyline. Her details about Kiowa history, culture, and spiritual traditions are respectful and fascinating. She also knows how to write an intense fight scene complete with menacing rattlesnakes. Tony Hillerman fans will enjoy discovering a promising mystery writer and her intriguing protagonist.

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Review

Return to Blood

by Willy Williams

Following his acclaimed debut, Better the Blood, Michael Bennett’s compelling sophomore outing in his crime series starring Māori detective Hana Westerman proves the New Zealand screenwriter and author is no one-hit wonder as a mystery writer. In the wake of the traumatic events recounted in the first book, Hana has resigned from the Auckland CIB (Criminal Investigation Branch) and returned to her hometown of Tātā Bay, where she helps her father, Eru, prepare local Māori teens to get their driver’s licenses. But the calm Hana is trying to rebuild is shattered when her 18-year-old daughter, Addison, discovers the skeleton of a young woman in the sand dunes. Investigators suspect the bones may be those of Kiri Thomas, a Māori teenager who disappeared four years earlier. Although Hana is no longer in the police force, she begins to probe the possibility that Kiri’s death may be connected to the 21-year-old unsolved murder of Paige Meadows, whose body was found in the same dunes. Likewise, Addison becomes obsessed with Kiri’s fate, threatening her friendship with her non-binary flatmate and musical partner, Plus 1. In a nod to Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, the storyline is interspersed with the dead Kiri’s haunting first-person narrative. Bennett, who is Māori, immerses readers deeper into Māori culture and traditions as he expands on Hana’s loving relationship with her father and tense interactions with her chilly second cousin, Eyes. An atmospheric thriller that will have readers booking flights to New Zealand. Bennett is adapting Better the Blood into a six-part TV series for Taika Waititi’s production company.

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Review

Fire Exit

by Henrietta Thornton

In his debut novel, prizewinning short-story author Talty (a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation) brings us to just outside the border of the Penobscot reservation in Maine. Charles Lamosway lives within sight of the reservation, also within sight of a house where his daughter, Ellie, lives. Most people, including Ellie, think that her mother’s husband is Ellie’s father. Charles knows “what it [is] like to feel invisible inside the great, great dream of being,” with Talty succeeding beautifully in portraying a man who’s cut off from his own life and from the world around him, even as he cares for his mother, who is slowly slipping into dementia—a situation that brings Charles and readers some moments of dark comedy—and faces his stepfather’s violent death. Then—it seems almost inevitable, given Charles’ lot in life—his daughter goes missing, and secrets can no longer hold. The beauty of this book lies in following Charles as he tries to pierce the barriers that keep his love from mattering, a relentless struggle often mirrored in long phrases with repeated words (“and only then did the man leave and only then did the doctor come to the heavy wooden door”). There’s a satisfying ending here, and sure to be further prizes ahead for Talty.

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Review

Blood Sisters

by Henrietta Thornton

“Where there’s pain, there’s blame,” which is why Syd Walker lives far from her Oklahoma roots and hasn’t seen her family in years. As a teen, Syd; her sister, Emma Lou; and her best friend, Luna, were attacked by a pair of masked Tsigilis, the Cherokee word for devils. Syd, who is Cherokee, shot one of them dead, but his gang killed Luna and her parents. She can’t forgive herself for not saving Luna, and the small town of Picher can’t decide, even all these years later, what she should have done that night. That past is now coming back with a vengeance as the epidemic of missing young Native women now seems to have swallowed Emma Lou, and the body of another young woman has been found, with Syd’s old work ID card in her mouth. Syd’s return home immerses the reader in the difficulty of returning to a place and people you’ve outgrown, the bitter choices we must sometimes make—Syd is now an archaeologist for the same Bureau of Indian Affairs that has cost her people so much—and the strength that love and loyalty bring. Lillie (an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma) adds to the story details of Native history and current day life, with sardonic wit both tempering and highlighting the pain that pierces both times. A dark and propulsive thriller for fans of Kelly J. Ford.

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Review

Better the Blood

by Brian Kenney

A tight and tense police investigation that brilliantly integrates Māori culture and history. When a gruesome murder in contemporary Auckland, with the victim found hanging in a secret room within an abandoned building, leads to another murder, Māori detective Hana Westerman realizes she may be on the trail of New Zealand’s first serial killer. But what connects the victims? A daguerreotype from New Zealand’s bloody, colonial past—plus texts and images the killer sends her—provide Hana with a terrifying road map to what’s ahead if she can’t stop him. Through Hana, author Michael Bennett (Ngati Pikiao, Ngati Whakaue) connects the past and the present, both in New Zealand’s history and within Hana’s own life. To find the killer; keep her family safe, especially her university-age, politically charged daughter; and face a painful incident from her youth, Hana must undergo a transformation. And the woman we meet at the end of the narrative is indeed far different from the one who begins it. This is crime fiction at its best: well-paced, richly characterized, and fearless in confronting the pain of colonialism.

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