The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

 If you are a horror fan, The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones will be right up your alley.  This one is intense and terrifying, but offers a satisfying and hopeful ending.  This is a story about our own personal history and how our choices will sometimes come back to get us.  It's about finding our path in life and knowing which direction we should be heading.  

The Only Good Indians is the story of four friends who find themselves in hunting grounds that are off limits to them.  This part of the reservation is for the elders only, but they head in anyways.  When they find a huge herd of elk in their sights, they can't help themselves and open fire, taking down more than they ever could have imagined.  But one of the elk was unexpectedly pregnant, clinging to life to protect her calf, to no avail.  As the 10 year anniversary of the "Thanksgiving Classic" is approaching, things start getting weird for Lewis.  He is driven to madness as the thoughts of that struggling calf come back to him.  But Lewis is only the first of his friends that finds the memories of that day haunting them.  Soon the others are fighting for their lives as their past comes fighting back in to the present. 

Canyon Dreams: A Basketball Season on the Navajo Nation by Michael Powell

Canyon Dreams by Michael Powell was my latest read, and I was just blown away.  Powell's storytelling is beautiful and stunning and heartbreaking.  While this book tells of one season of the Chinle High School basketball team, this is a story about so much more than basketball.  It is really a novel about the Navajo people and the struggles they often face living on the reservation.  It is about the history and traditions of the Navajo and how their lives have evolved over the years.  This is a human interest story that will have you cheering for this group of boys as they navigate not only the long basketball season, but lives full of heartache and hope.  I loved this novel so much.  I really can't say enough good things about it.

Note: There is a series on Netflix to accompany this novel.  It is called Basketball or Nothing. 

From Amazon:

The moving story of a Navajo high school basketball team, its members struggling with the everyday challenges of high school, adolescence, and family, and the great and unique obstacles facing Native Americans living on reservations.

Deep in the heart of northern Arizona, in a small and isolated patch of the vast 17.5-million-acre Navajo reservation, sits Chinle High School. Here, basketball is passion, passed from grandparent to parent to child. Rez Ball is a sport for winters where dark and cold descend fast and there is little else to do but roam mesa tops, work, and wonder what the future holds. The town has 4,500 residents and the high school arena seats 7,000. Fans drive thirty, fifty, even eighty miles to see the fast-paced and highly competitive matchups that are more than just games to players and fans.

Celebrated Times journalist Michael Powell brings us a narrative of triumph and hardship, a moving story about a basketball team on a Navajo reservation that shows how important sports can be to youths in struggling communities, and the transcendent magic and painful realities that confront Native Americans living on reservations. This book details his season-long immersion in the team, town, and culture, in which there were exhilarating wins, crushing losses, and conversations on long bus rides across the desert about dreams of  leaving home and the fear of the same.

Agnes at the End of the World by Kelly McWilliams

Agnes at the End of the World by Kelly McWilliams was an engrossing and tense read that will keep you on the edge of your seat.  In a novel about faith, family,  and trust, McWilliams gives a strong and powerful female lead.  Through Agnes we learn about the cruelties that people (especially women) face inside a cult.  We learn about the strength and determination it takes to leave and the faith it takes to come back. 

Agnes has always been the faithful servant in her small Red Creek community.  She does the right thing and is obedient to her father and the Prophet.  Except when it comes to her little brother Ezekiel.  Ezekiel depends on a monthly supply of insulin from the outside world and nobody knows that Agnes has been receiving this forbidden medicine from an Outsider.  When she realizes that life in Red Creek isn't the paradise she has been led to believe, Agnes makes the courageous decision to leave for the Outside.  But what she finds is shocking.  The Outside is caught in an apocalyptic pandemic and things are deteriorating quickly.  But through this chaos, Agnes discovers she has more power than she ever thought.  She may just be the answer to saving her family and many others from the illness that is ravaging the planet.  Now she has to decide if she is strong enough to once again face Red Creek and the world she thought she had escaped. 

From Amazon:

The Handmaid's Tale meets Wilder Girls in this genre-defying novel about a girl who escapes a terrifying cult only to discover that the world Outside has succumbed to a viral apocalypse.

Agnes loves her home of Red Creek -- its quiet, sunny mornings, its dusty roads, and its God. There, she cares tirelessly for her younger siblings and follows the town's strict laws. What she doesn't know is that Red Creek is a cult, controlled by a madman who calls himself a prophet.

Then Agnes meets Danny, an Outsider boy, and begins to question what is and isn't a sin. Her younger brother, Ezekiel, will die without the insulin she barters for once a month, even though medicine is considered outlawed. Is she a sinner for saving him? Is her sister, Beth, a sinner for dreaming of the world beyond Red Creek?

As the Prophet grows more dangerous, Agnes realizes she must escape with Ezekiel and leave everyone else, including Beth, behind. But it isn't safe Outside, either: A viral pandemic is burning through the population at a terrifying rate. As Agnes ventures forth, a mysterious connection grows between her and the Virus. But in a world where faith, miracles, and cruelty have long been indistinguishable, will Agnes be able to choose between saving her family and saving the world?