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Book: “Indian Burial Ground” by Nick Medina
Publishing Info: Berkley, April 2024
Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley.
Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.0rg | Amazon | Indiebound
Book Description: All Noemi Broussard wanted was a fresh start. With a new boyfriend who actually treats her right and a plan to move from the reservation she grew up on—just like her beloved Uncle Louie before her—things are finally looking up for her. Until the news of her boyfriend’s apparent suicide brings her world crumbling down. But the facts about Roddy’s death just don’t add up, and Noemi isn’t the only one who suspects something menacing might be lurking within their tribal lands.
After more than a decade away, Uncle Louie has returned to the reservation, bringing with him a past full of secrets and horror and what might be the key to determining Roddy’s true cause of death. Together, Noemi and Louie set out to find answers…but as they get closer to the truth, Noemi begins to question whether it might be best for some secrets to remain buried.
Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!
Last year I read and reviewed Nick Medina’s “Sisters of a Lost Nation”, a horror novel that had its scariest moments not in the supernatural bits (though those were also great), but in the way it addressed the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women epidemic. It was such a visceral read that I knew I needed to see what Medina was going to write next, and so when “Indian Burial Ground” ended up on my radar I was ACHING to read it. NetGalley came through, and it ended up on my Kindle. I knew that I needed to carve out some time, because it was going to take up my literary focus once I started. And lo and behold my prediction came true. “Indian Burial Ground” had my full attention.
Like in “Sisters of a Lost Nation”, we return to the fictional Takoda Reservation in Louisiana, and not only do we get a revisit to this setting, but also so some of its side characters (I love it when authors do this, honestly, so that was a bit of a treat from the jump). “Indian Burial Ground” is told in two separate timelines. The first is in the modern day, where we mostly follow Noemi, whose boyfriend Roddy was just killed after being hit by a car, the death officially called a suicide. Noemi just can’t believe that Roddy would do that, and starts to think that something else is at play, just as her uncle Louie returns home after being away from the reservation for years. The next is in the summer of 1986, where Louie has been balancing trying to take care of his toddler niece to help out his teenage sister Lula, as well as trying to keep the family above water as their mother sinks deeper and deeper into alcoholism. During this time, strange deaths start to happen on the Takoda Reservation, as well as some desecrations at the tribal cemetary where bones are being stolen. As Louie starts piecing together rumors, histories, and seemingly supernatural clues, he starts to panic over protecting his niece. Medina effortlessly pulls these two timelines together, switching between the perspectives of Noemi and Louie, and shows an undercurrent of unrest on the Takoda Reservation that is still affecting the people who live, or lived, there. The two stories are both compelling in their own ways, one of which being supernatural and eerie, and the other more of a mystery about a tragedy and whether or not the official explanation is the actual one. And then bringing them together to tell a bigger story with realistic truths couched in supernatural horrors.
And the horrors, supernatural or not, are ample, twisted, and deeply emotional. or the more fantastical scares, I enjoyed the folklore inspirations that Medina created for the Takoda characters, with morality tales that are perhaps playing out in real time as members of the community start diverting from the path that is promoted in their culture and identity, and how that is possibly causing the destruction and deaths in the community in the summer of 1986. There were so many bits of unnerving creepiness, and it is clear to me that Medina is very talented at the slow build scary story. Whether it’s a coyote eating from a corpse in a brazen way, or a dead body suddenly rising up as if alive, I was creeped out many times during my read. But it’s also the real life horrors that Medina delves into in this book that pack a serious punch, with themes of addiction, mental illness, systemic racism, poverty, and many other tragic circumstances of the Takoda people living on the reservation. It could be teenage Louie being parentified to care for his cousin and another child in the community, or his and Lula’s mother being in the throes of alcoholism to the point where she isn’t caring for her children anymore, or the possible mental illness that Noemi just can’t accept as a very real truth in Roddy’s life. It were these moments that really got to me because they were all so emotional and frank about living as an Indigenous person on a reservation in America, and the lack of societal supports given.
“Indian Burial Ground” is dark and unrelenting, and it is another triumph from a fresh new voice in horror writing. Definitely recommended.
Rating 8: A deeply disturbing and heart wrenching horror novel that takes its scares from folklore inspiration, as well as the all too real horrors of being Indigenous in America.
Reader’s Advisory:
“Indian Burial Ground” is included on the Goodreads lists “Indigenous Fiction 2024”, and “Horror to Look Forward to in 2024”.
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