Indigenous American Fiction

Following its unforgettable characters through almost two centuries of history, from the horrors of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1865 to the aftermath of a mass shooting in the early 21st century, Wandering Stars is an indelible novel of America's war on its own people. It is also the tender, shattering story of many generations of a Native American family, struggling to find ways through displacement, addiction and pain, towards home and hope.

Lyn has her pottery artwork, her precocious kid, Willow, and the uncertain terrain of her midlife to keep her mind, heart and hands busy. June, a Métis Studies professor, yearns to uproot from Vancouver and move. With her loving partner, Sigh, and their faithful pup, June decides to buy a house in the last place on earth she imagined she’d end up: back home in Winnipeg with her family.

In this followup to his hugely popular Midnight Storm Moonless Sky: Indigenous Horror Stories, Blackfoot storyteller Alex Soop plunges us again into enthralling tales that mix reality with dark terror. Within its stories, Whisper at Night and They Will Come reveals ancient theories of the paranormal, post apocalyptic scenarios, impossible wells of grief, and monstrous phobias. Soop scares the wits out of listeners, all the while uncovering overlooked social anxieties and racism affecting Indigenous Peoples across North America.

For decades, the singular and provocative paintings by Cree artist Kent Monkman have featured a recurring character—an alter ego of sorts, a shape-shifting, time-travelling elemental being named Miss Chief Eagle Testickle. Though we have glimpsed her across the years, and on countless canvases, it is finally time to hear her story, in her own words. And, in doing so, to hear the whole history of Turtle Island anew.

In Aurora Crossing by best-selling author Karl H. Schlesier, a young man - an outsider by upbringing and ancestry - becomes embroiled in the Nez Perces War of 1877. His quest to find identity and belonging in the clash of cultures takes him on the historic 1,200-mile Nez Perces trek from Idaho toward refuge in Canada.

After discovering a near-lifeless Eli at the base of the Great Tree, Morgan knows she doesn't have much time to save him. And it will mean asking for help—from friends old and new. Racing against the clock, and with Arik and Emily at her side, Morgan sets off to follow the trail away from the Great Tree to find Eli's soul before it's too late. As they journey deep into the northern woods, a place they've been warned never to enter, they face new challenges and life-threatening attacks from strange and horrifying creatures.

Chicago: home to urban Indians and immigrants and working folks and the whole gamut of people getting by in a world that doesn't care whether they do so or not. Sacred City is an incomparable follow-up to Van Alst's award-winning debut collection, Sacred Smokes. Our young narrator now heads deeper into the heart of the city and himself, accompanied by ancestors and spirits who help him and the audience see that Chicago was, is, and always will be Indian Country.

The final novel from Richard Wagamese, the best-selling and beloved author of Indian Horse and Medicine Walk, centres on an abused woman on the run who finds refuge on a farm owned by an Indigenous man with wounds of his own. A profoundly moving novel about the redemptive power of love, mercy, and compassion - and the land's ability to heal us.

The Raven is as much a paradoxical creature as he is important in the myths of many native cultures. The central character of these stories, the Raven is considered the benevolent creator, filling the world with beauty and harmony, the master mind behind all that is good and looked upon with warm admiration. On the other hand, he is often viewed as a malevolent conniving, scheming trickster with self-gratification as his only goal.

Located in the history-rich Finger Lakes region in New York, Cadence is a small town with a big secret. When interracially married Marian Greene discovers a desecrated body in the library, she, husband Lester, and friend, Enoch Shenandoah, realize they are in peril and inextricably tied to the tragic, racially-charged secret as descendants of the town founders. They race to solve the murder and reveal the secret, with the occasional guidance of dreams, spirits, and animals, and, along the way, they suffer moments of dark introspection and crises of faith. The journey brings them to ...

Blackfoot storyteller Alex Soop plunges us into a shocking well of imagination in this collection of short stories, Midnight Storm Moonless Sky. From hauntings on the Highway of Tears to fearful gatherings of ghosts and the sorrows of racism, Soop combines the social anxieties of Indigenous life with spellbinding flights and frights of speculative fiction. Through these enthralling stories of reality mixed with terror, listeners get a wicked glimpse into the genre of Indigenous horror.

Growing up in a gang in the city can be dark. Growing up Native American in a gang in Chicago is a whole different story. This book takes a trip through that unexplored part of Indian Country, an intense journey that is full of surprises, shining a light on the interior lives of people whose intellectual and emotional concerns are often overlooked. This dark, compelling, occasionally inappropriate, and often hilarious linked story collection introduces a character who defies all stereotypes about urban life and Indians. He will be in listeners' heads for a long time to come.

The Narrows of Fear (Wapawikoscikanik) navigates the unsettling, but necessary. When love of, and respect for, culture goes awry, it is our indigenous women who bring us back to what is important. This novel is an interweaving of stories centered on a range of characters, both male and female, though the women, for the most part, are the healers. Though several were abused both in their own community and in residential schools, these women are smart and loving and committed to helping one another.

Originally published in 1891, Wynema is the first novel known to have been written by a woman of American Indian descent. Set against the sweeping and often tragic cultural changes that affected southeastern native peoples during the late 19th century, it tells the story of a lifelong friendship between two women from vastly different backgrounds - Wynema Harjo, a Muscogee Indian, and Genevieve Weir, a Methodist teacher from a genteel Southern family.

With heart, pathos, humor, and insight, twenty renowned writers, performers, athletes, and activists explore what it means to be Native American today. Through a series of essays and poems, these luminaries give voice to their individual experiences while shedding light on the depth and complexity of modern Native American identity, resiliency, and joy.

It is winter, north of the Arctic Circle. A few hours of pale light is all the sun has to offer before the landscape is once more enveloped in complete darkness. This is Sápmi, land of the Sámi, Scandinavia’s Indigenous people. Nine-year-old Elsa is the daughter of Sámi reindeer herders. Her community is under constant threat. One morning, when Elsa goes skiing alone, she witnesses a man brutally killing her beloved reindeer calf. Elsa is terrified by what she sees. Fearing for her own life and for the lives of her family members, she remains silent.

Now that Clara is almost in third grade, she’s finally old enough to spend her first summer away from home visiting her grandma, Unci, and her cousin at their home in Standing Rock Reservation. To welcome her visit, Uncle Louie brings an extra-special surprise in his pickup truck: the tipi that’s been passed down through their family for generations. The girls learn how to stack the poles and wrap the canvas covering around them, how to paint spirit pictures on its walls, and how the circle of the tipi tells its own story, reminding us to how to live in the great Circle of Life.

mother is a work rooted in an intimate fracture: an Indigenous child is adopted out of her tribe and raised by a non-Indian family. As an adult finding her way back to her origins, our unnamed narrator begins to put the pieces of her birth family's history together through the stories told to her by her mother, father, sister, and brother, all of whom remained on the reservation where she was born. Through oral histories, family lore, and imagined pasts and futures, a collage of their community emerges, raising profound questions about adoption, inheritance, and Indigenous identity in America.

On an island at the edge of a wide, wild sea, a girl and her grandmother gather gifts from the earth. Salmon from the stream, herring eggs from the ocean, and in the forest, a world of berries. Through the seasons, they sing to the land as the land sings to them. Brimming with joy and gratitude, in every step of their journey, they forge a deeper kinship with both the earth and the generations that came before, joining in the song that connects us all.

Buck, government name Michael Fineday, Ojibwe name Miskwa’ doden (Red Deer), is on the brink of suicide. He has just been served divorce papers by his wife, Naomi, who is fed up with his savior complex and the danger it often attracts to their door. Living on the border of Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community reservation, Buck makes a living as a boatbuilder and carpenter. He spends his days alone, trying to win the trust of a feral cat … until a semi-feral girl shows up, fascinated by the canoe Buck is building.