Native American Fiction

In Adult Fiction
Reservation Blues  by Sherman Alexie
A stranger arrives on the reservation carrying a magic guitar, which he's been given as part of his bargain with "the Gentleman" for blues immortality. Now he's trying to lose guitar, devil and deal. Taking the instrument off his hands, Thomas Builds-the-Fire soon forms an all-Indian R&B band with friends Victor and Junior. Will they succeed, and, if they do, will they lose their souls?

Legacy of Masks  by Sallie Bissell
Homesick and longing for the company of handsome Jonathan Walkingstick, former Atlanta D.A. Mary Crow returns to North Carolina to open her own practice and finds herself taking on the case of Ridge Standingdeer, a young Cherokee farmhand accused of killing the local prom queen.

Yellowcake  by Ann Cummins
More than 30 years after the closing of a nearby uranium mine, the arrival of Becky Atcitty, the daughter of a former Navajo mill worker and a woman involved in a group seeking damages for exposure to radioactive dust, sparks conflict in the life of Ryland Mahoney and his family, in the story of two families – one Navajo, one Anglo.

A Yellow Raft in Blue Water  by Michael Dorris
Follows three generations of Indian women beset by hardships and torn by angry secrets, yet inextricably bound together by the indissoluble bonds of kinship.

The Antelope Wife  by Louise Erdrich
Are our lives woven from old scores and past betrayals, or are we "working out the minor details of a strictly random pattern?" This philosophical chestnut is at the heart of Louise Erdrich's latest novel, The Antelope Wife, a sprawling tale of two Native American (Ojibwa) families, the Roys and Shawanos.

Thirteen Moons  by Charles Frazier
From the age of 12, when he is sent alone into the wilderness to run an Indian trading post, Will's life becomes intertwined with the destiny of the Cherokee Indians, as he falls in love with a girl named Claire and builds a friendship with a chief named Bear.

People of the Silence  by Kathleen O’Neal Gear
On his deathbed the Great Sun Chief discovers that, 15 summers before, his wife bore a child to another man, and to protect it from his wrath, she hid the infant girl in a village far to the north. The Great Sun does not know who the young woman is, or what she looks like, but he wants her dead.

The White  by Deborah Larsen
A novel based on the story of Mary Jemison, who, in 1758, was taken by a Shawnee raiding party from her home near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, describes her life among the Seneca and reveals how she became an integral part of their tribe.

Ceremony  by Leslie Silko
On a New Mexico reservation, one Navajo family – including Tayo, a veteran deeply scarred by his experiences as a Japanese POW and by the rejection of his own people – struggles to survive in a world no longer theirs in the years surrounding World War II.

Blue Horse Dreaming  by Melanie Wallace
"I will not live among you," Abigail Buwell says when she is taken from her life among the savages and returned, against her will, to "civilization" – the last military outpost on the frontier's hostile edge. Only Major Robert Cutter, the commander into whose hands she is delivered, hears her words. Abigail Buwell views her "redemption" as captivity, with freedom still far out of reach.

The Miracle Life of Edward Mint  by Brady Udall
Half-Apache orphan Edgar is taken from his home on an Arizona reservation after he is run over by a mailman, which sets in motion a journey from the hospital to a school for delinquents to a Mormon foster family and his eventual, unexpected return home.

In Mystery Fiction
The Shadow Dancer  by Margaret Coel
Arapaho attorney Vicky Holden and her friend Father John O'Malley investigate the mysterious death of Ben Holden while dealing with James "Orlando" Sherwood and his followers, who are intent on resurrecting the old Shadow Dance religion.

Dance of the Thunder Dogs  by Kirk Mitchell
After 13 years of federal law enforcement with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Emmett Parker returns home, only to find himself torn between his role as a government investigator and his Comanche roots.

Indian Pipes  by Cynthia Riggs
Ninety-two-year-old police deputy Victoria Trumbull reluctantly becomes involved in the local Native American tribe's internal dispute over a proposed gambling casino, when the argument turns deadly and two people are found dead.