Title: Elatsoe
Author: Darcie Little Badger
Publisher: Levine Querido
Year: 2020
353 pages
From the Back: Imagine an America very similar to our own. It's got homework, best friends, and pistachio ice cream. There are some differences. This America has been shaped dramatically by the magic, monsters, knowledge, and legends of its peoples, those Indigenous and those not. Some of these forces are charmingly everyday, like the ability to make an orb of light appear or travel across the world through rings of fungi. But other forces are less charming and should never see the light of day.
Elatsoe lives in this lightly stranger America. She can raise the ghosts of dead animals, a skill passed down through generations of her Lipan Apache family. Her beloved cousin has just been murdered, in a town that wants no prying eyes. But she is going to do more than pry. The picture-perfect facade of Willowbee masks gruesome secrets, and she will rely on her wits, skills, an friends to tear off the mask and protect her family.
Personal Thoughts: This book has all sorts of things in it - magic, vampires, love, murder, mystery. It was a charming book that was enjoyable enough to read. And I was glad to read a book written by an Indigenous author that was fiction, rather than non-fiction. For some reason, my imagination kept making the characters young children instead of the young adults that there were, but I can't say whether that had anything to do with the writing or just my inability to keep focused during this book. However, it was an entertaining story with many unexpected twists and turns and quite an interesting ending.
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