10 Enthralling Books for Native American Heritage Month

From Richard Wagamese, the award-winning Ojibwe Canadian author of Indian Horse and Medicine Walk, comes “a worthy testament to the healing power of family and tradition” (Publishers Weekly). 

When Joe Willie Wolfchild, a champion bull rider, is forced into early retirement after an accident that leaves his body and mind in shambles, he decides to settle on the family ranch, Wolfcreek.

There, he meets Claire Hartley and her fifteen-year-old son Aiden, who, after almost being pulled apart by abusive boyfriends and an unforgiving world, find the ranch from a friend. Soon, Aiden and Joe Willie learn they have much more in common than meets the eye, and make a deal: Aiden will help Joe Willie repair his truck if the champion teaches the kid to ride a bull. 

In an enchanting blend of “cowboy lore and Native American mysticism,” Wagemese weaves a tale of freedom, independence, and what it means to be home (Booklist).

Considered to be a classic of Native American literature, Ray Young Bear presents a captivating coming-of-age story through a mix of prose and poetry, as well as ancient and modern customs. 

With no funds to join their friends for a night of drinking, Edgar Bearchild and Ted Facepaint decide to attend a ceremonial gathering instead. There, they partake in the congregation’s sacred star medicine, and Edgar is visited by a vision that brings his past and future into startling clarity. 

Beginning in the 1960s, the reader follows Edgar’s youthful adventures through his time at a well-known liberal arts college in California and his return to Iowa, now a successful poet.

Told in illuminating prose and images, Black Eagle Child offers breathtaking insight into what it means to be Indigenous in the contemporary world. 

It is the early twentieth century, and two Native American brothers move from the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota to France, joining the bloody and violent Great War. 

After serving their time in the American Expeditionary Forces, the brothers return home to the Anishinaabe culture, where author and poet Gerald Vizenor speaks to the traditional themes at the core of his work.

Eventually, they will have to leave again for Paris, where they begin creative, ambitious lives, in a tale Bram Stoker Award-winning author Stephen Graham Jones described as “What I want to say about this book is a picture. You'll see it too, and for a long time after.”

From a National Book Award and PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author, among numerous other literary achievements, comes thirty-one new and beloved stories that live up to the reputation Sherman Alexie has carved out for himself “as the great, tragicomic bard of the modern Native American experience” (Los Angeles Times).

Drawing on his life among Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest, Alexie includes some of his most well-known tales, including “What You Pawn I will Redeem,” about a homeless Indian man on a mission to get back his family heirloom. 

His new releases detail donkey basketball leagues, marriage, wind turbines, and much more. Above all, Alexie “once again reasserts himself as one of the most compelling contemporary practitioners of the short story” (Boston Globe).

Praised by Grand Master Ursula K. LeGuin, “Every sentence is unexpected, yet infallible,” in this prize-winning collection that follows Jordan Coolwater over his life, from a thoughtful teenager, struggling artist, escaped convict, and ultimately, a father. 

Cheyenne Madonna offers a stripped, raw portrait of America, and what it does to both its outlaws and visionaries. The first story in the collection “Galveston Bay, 1826,” won an O. Henry Prize, and all in all, demonstrates Eddie Chuculate as “a kind of journalist of the soul as he investigates the broken-hearted nation of Indian men” (Joy Harjo, United States Poet Laureate from 2019 to 2022).

Drawing on his ancestral homeland of Sonoma Mountain in Northern California as rich source material, author Greg Sarris weaves together sixteen interconnected stories, inspired by traditional Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo creation tales. 

Twin crows Question Woman and Answer Woman take readers on a journey unlike any other, to a place that feels oddly reminiscent of our own homes. 

As put by the Los Angeles Review of Books, “Sarris has breathed new life into these ancient Northern California tales and legends, lending them a subtle, light-hearted voice and vision.”

Born and raised in a seaside village, Thomas Witka, newly married to his childhood sweetheart Ruth, decides to enlist in the Vietnam War. There, worlds away from his Native American community, he has a child with another woman.

While he returns home a hero, his people face a decision that pits survival against spirituality: do they hunt a whale? From Linda Hogan, an author Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Barbara Kingsolver says, “reinforces my faith in reading, writing, and living,” embark on a deeply original and moving tale. 

From the multi-Bram Stoker award-winning author and member of the Blackfeet Tribe, this novel “masterfully plays with the serial killer genre, walking a line between convention and invention and delving into the psychology of both killer and detective” (Publishers Weekly).

Over eight years, an unknown serial killer has been visiting towns with biblical names, always disposing of two bodies—one man and one woman—in gruesome positions. One day, in Nazareth, Texas, a Native American man suspected of shoplifting shoots down a sheriff. And when the police searched his car, they found two decaying bodies that matched the killer’s motives. 

What ensues is a daring and enthralling manhunt, with Deputy Sheriff Jim Doe and the FBI on the man’s tail, in a “crime drama [that does what it] is supposed to do: scare the bejesus out of the reader” (San Antonio Express-News).

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2021, Louise Erdrich bases the novel on her grandfather’s real experiences as a night watchman, fighting against Native dispossession.

As a Chippewa Council member, the newly proposed “emancipation” bill by the United States Congress threatens Thomas Wazhashk and his fellow Native Americans’ very identities and lands. 

Ever since finishing high school, class valedictorian Pixie Paranteau has been going by Patrice and dreams of following her sister, Vera, to Minneapolis. Tired of her alcoholic father’s behavior, and being the sole carer of her mom and siblings, she refuses to have a family of her own one day.

Although Vera disappeared, it is said that she has a baby, and when Patrice makes the journey one day, she’ll be subjected to unexpected violence. 

Other than Thomas and Patrice, the young boxer Wood Mountain and his mother Juggie Blue, as well as the white high school math teacher Patrice harbors a secret love for, find themselves in this reservation community.

As described by the New York Times, “in this era of modern termination assailing us, the book feels like a call to arms. A call to humanity.”

This debut from Tommy Orange, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, follows 12 characters from Native American communities who come together for the Big Oakland Powwow.

Among the group are Jacquie Red Feather, recently sober and desperately trying to reconnect with her family; Dene Oxened, working to get his life back together after his uncle's passing; and Young Orvil, who will be performing the traditional dance for the first time. 

Together, their voices join to tell illuminating stories of modern, urban Native American peoples, grappling with history and forging a path through beauty, spirituality, and community.