Indigenous Fiction

Gundagai, 1852. The powerful Murrumbidgee River surges through town leaving death and destruction in its wake. It is a stark reminder that while the river can give life, it can just as easily take it away. Wagadhaany is one of the lucky ones. She survives. But is her life now better than the fate she escaped? Forced to move away from her miyagan, she walks through each day with no trace of dance in her step, her broken heart forever calling her back home to Gundagai.

For decades, a dark force has terrorized the Languille Lake reservation. Only spoken of in whispers as "the sandman," he lurks in the Hidden Atlantis Lake Resort and Casino, the reservation's main attraction and source of revenue, leeching its patrons' dreams and ambitions and also preventing the ghosts that linger there from moving on. Fleeing a breakup, Marion Lafournier, a mid-twenties Ojibwe, seeks solace in the slot machine's siren song.

From the acclaimed Ojibwe author and professor Anton Treuer comes an essential book of questions and answers for Native and non-Native young listeners alike.

Quill has lived on the Red Pine reservation in Minnesota her whole life. She knows what happens to women who look like her. Just a girl when Jimmy Sky jumped off the railway bridge and she ran for help, Quill realizes now that she’s never stopped running. As she trains for the Boston Marathon early one morning in the woods, she hears a scream. When she returns to search the area, all she finds are tire tracks and a single beaded earring.

Does time heal all wounds? Or do some last forever? Pennsylvania, 1971: Graham Davidson is a young man with survivor’s guilt after the death of three siblings. Estranged from his father and seeking a direction in his life, Graham learns about vision quests from a Crow Indian. He secures seasonal employment in Yellowstone National Park and embarks on a spiritual journey. Wyoming Territory, 1871: Under a full moon at a sacred thermal area, Graham finds himself in Yellowstone a century earlier - one year before it was established as a national park.

A historical fiction book set in Alaska and the Yukon during the Klondike Gold Rush in 1896. Experience the thrill and peril of the Klondike Gold Rush through the eyes of those who dared to chase dreams amid the unforgiving wilderness of Alaska and the Yukon. With the promise of gold glittering in their minds, a diverse group of hopefuls embarks on a grueling journey filled with both camaraderie and conflict, where every step brings new challenges and revelations. As the protagonists navigate from Seattle to Juneau and onward to the treacherous Chilkoot Pass, they endure physical exhaustion...

When Nathan goes to visit his grandma, Nali, at her mobile summer home on the Navajo reservation, he knows he’s in for a pretty uneventful summer, with no electricity or cell service. Still, he loves spending time with Nali and with his uncle Jet, though it’s clear when Jet arrives that he brings his problems with him. One night, while lost in the nearby desert, Nathan finds someone extraordinary: a Holy Being from the Navajo Creation Story - a Water Monster - in need of help.

Joan has been searching for her missing husband, Victor, for nearly a year - ever since that terrible night they’d had their first serious argument hours before he mysteriously vanished. Her Métis family has lived in their tightly knit rural community for generations, but no one keeps the old ways...until they have to. That moment has arrived for Joan. One morning, grieving and severely hungover, Joan hears a shocking sound coming from inside a revival tent in a gritty Walmart parking lot. It is the unmistakable voice of Victor.

In the drought-stricken Kimberley, where water means the difference between survival and ruin, Special Investigator Odysseus "Odie" Kalaris is called to a sacred waterhole where the body of water project engineer Michael Crawford lies half-submerged, surrounded by poorly staged traditional elements. What begins as a murder investigation evolves into something far more sinister, revealing connections between ancient underground water systems and generations of deliberate deception. When a second victim—environmental consultant Rebecca Palmer—is found at another sacred site, Odie must ...

In the beginning, the world is spoken into existence with one word: “Earth.” There are no inhabitants, and no sun—only the broad sky, silent sea, and sovereign Framer and Shaper. Then come the twin heroes Hunahpu and Xbalanque. Wielding blowguns, they begin a journey to hell and back, ready to confront the folly of false deities as well as death itself, in service to the world and to humanity. This is the story of the Mayan Popol Vuh, “the book of the woven mat,” one of the only epics indigenous to the Americas.

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.

Flight is the hilarious and tragic story of an orphaned Indian boy - "Zits" - who travels back and forth through time in a charged search for his true identity. With powerful, swift prose, Flight follows the troubled teenager as he learns that violence is not the answer.

Told in a series of voices, Calling for a Blanket Dance takes us into the life of Ever Geimausaddle through the multigenerational perspectives of his family as they face myriad obstacles. His father’s injury at the hands of corrupt police, his mother's struggle to hold on to her job and care for her husband, the constant resettlement of the family, and the legacy of centuries of injustice all intensify Ever’s bottled-up rage. Meanwhile, all of Ever’s relatives have ideas about who he is and who he should be.

On the Flathead Indian Reservation, summer is ending, and Louise White Elk is determined to forge her own path. Raised by her Grandmother Magpie after the death of her mother, Louise and her younger sister have grown up into the harsh social and physical landscape of western Montana in the 1940s, where Native people endure boarding schools and life far from home. As she approaches adulthood, Louise hopes to create an independent life for herself and an improved future for her family—but three persistent men have other plans.

In this intimate collection, Amanda Peters melds traditional storytelling with beautiful, spare prose to describe the dignity of the traditional way of life, the humiliations of systemic racism and the resilient power to endure. A young man returns from residential school only to realize he can no longer communicate with his own parents. A grieving mother finds purpose and healing on the front lines as a water protector. And a nervous child dances in her first Mawi’omi. The collection also includes the Indigenous Voices Award–winning and title story “Waiting for the Long Night Moon.”

Can you love someone whose worldview is different from yours? Who is committed to a cause that excludes you because of your race? Simon is an Indigenous person dedicated to the struggle for justice for First Nations people. Mattie loves him but is love enough? Birds are dying. At the Saunders Bird Rescue and Sanctuary where rescued parrots abandoned by their owners are rehabilitated and re-homed, a deadly virus has them dying in Mattie's hands. In the midst of this outbreak, she's called to investigate a mortality event where dozens of starlings fly into the pavement as if committing ...

On a hot day in 1960s Maine, six-year-old Joe watches his little sister, Ruthie, sitting on her favourite rock at the edge of the blueberry fields, while their family, Mi’kmaq people from Nova Scotia, pick fruit. That afternoon, Ruthie vanishes without a trace. As the last person to see her, Joe will be forever haunted by grief, guilt, and the agony of imagining how his life could have been.

The first time Dieter Schmidt meets Mad Maggie is at a blockade on a logging road. He’s there to threaten the local First Nations band with court action if they don’t allow his client’s heavy equipment access to Deadman’s Island. Maggie emerges from the forest, but rather than chastise the lawyer for his part in trying to replace this unique ecosystem of magnificent old-growth trees with a housing development, she gives him an ultimatum. She will cure his yet-to-be-diagnosed terminal cancer if he saves the trees. Dieter dismisses Maggie's prediction as the delusions of someone ...

A historical fiction book set in the Americas during the Age of Exploration. In "Dark Spanish Gold," the thrills and horrors of the New World collide as the relentless pursuit of wealth leads to the moral decay of Spanish explorers. Set against the backdrop of late 15th and early 16th centuries, this gripping tale invites readers into a world where ambition knows no bounds and the price of gold is often measured in blood. Follow the treacherous journeys of Christopher Columbus and Gonzalo Ximenes de Quesada as they navigate the Caribbean and the rich lands of South America. Witness the ...

Deadfall tracks Charlie Yazzie, Thomas Begay, and Harley Ponyboy into unfamiliar territory. When a family member unexpectedly dies, a debilitating sense of loss overcomes our friends on the reservation. The ties that have bound them begin to unravel. What witch's evil is at work? Is the bond forever broken? Or is there a connection to the ancient past that might bring this malevolent aura to an end?