Sisters of the Lost Nation

I sort of expected more from this book, particularly where important topics related to marginalized groups are addressed. I thought this book would be a good platform for discussion about the treatment of indigenous groups in America through the story of girls going missing, but it missed the mark with me.

Anna Horn and her sister Grace go to the same high school, but have very different social lives. Where Grace wants to conform to what the rest of her high school members expect of a teenager, Anna doesn’t feel compelled to. As the older sister, Anna is also employed as a housekeeper at her reservation’s casino, and it’s here that Anna starts getting the feeling that something is amiss on the eighth floor. Rather than bring her concerns to literally anyone else within the hotel, she starts investigating for herself, but not before Grace becomes involved in the whole affair.

I think this book suffers mostly from trying to do too much in too few pages. There’s the threads of good indigenous people/coming of age stories here, but it honestly felt like none of the threads were handled very carefully. There’s Anna’s struggle against expected gender roles with her sister and her high school. There’s Anna’s interest in the preservation of her tribe’s history, counter to what the rest of the tribe wants for itself. There’s the obvious mystery/thriller about indigenous women going missing. All of these could be handled on their own, but when blended together in one book kind of makes the whole a bit of a mess. When you get the issues bookended against each other, it feels all out of place.

The story is also initially written out of sequence, where you’re fed the beginning of the mystery climax up front and then are brought back and forth between “current time” Anna showing how all this started and “future Anna” neck deep in the climax. I think it’s supposed to create tension in making the reader wonder how things started and how it all converges together, but it came off a bit disjointed in execution. I also felt like the story, after the two sequences converge and we start closing in on what it all means, wasn’t a very compelling thriller. And rather than go all-in on what can happen to indigenous women who go missing, we get a rather unfulfilling epilogue where you can certainly draw inferences but nothing is outright explained. If the author wanted to discuss the hardships faced by indigenous women (as the author’s note seems to indicate), punches shouldn’t have been pulled in the end.

I guess it’s a fine book, but I don’t know if I’d consider it a thriller, a horror story, or anything that really pushes the envelope about social issues.

After reading about 1/4 of this I seriously considered putting it down. I understood the gist of what was being set up but I wasn't feeling connected to any of the characters - I didn't feel invested in their stories. I had a quick scan through Amazon reviews, which were all Glowing, and decided to continue.

I am SO pleased I did!

This story follows Anna, a Native American Indian, living on the reservation, and is so raw and painful on so many different levels: within her family, as they slowly disintegrate; Anna's school life, where she is cruelly and brutally teased, and worse, has zero support from the principal; her brother and sister, who not only see that she is something very different, but taints them by her presence; the desperation and despair surrounding missing women and the search for truth; as well as Anna's underlying search to understand the truth within herself.

There are so many things to love about this story. The author's willingness to tackle so many individual yet interconnected themes. The honesty of the pain and trauma mentioned above. The way the characters are purposefully not given in depth descriptions so that they can all be ‘anyone' - that person we've all seen or met before. The blending of traditional belief with modern life. The slow unfolding of the horror of what's been going on under everyone's noses.

I was in tears by the time I finished reading this, and was totally unprepared for the sucker punch included right at the end.

I am so very pleased I persevered with this as it is not only a raw and honest story, but also a deeply necessary one.

I cannot recommend this enough.