ANOTHER NAME FOR RED

A young Anishinaabe woman’s life is upended when her older sister disappears from tribal lands in Minnesota.

It’s been a year since Oldest Daughter disappeared, proving what everyone knows—law enforcement doesn’t care about murdered Native women. This realization has had a devastating effect on the woman’s family: Her grieving father has become a shut-in, her mother has become obsessively focused on activism in the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women movement, and the two youngest children are starved for attention. Middle Daughter, 22, the book’s narrator, has become the sole breadwinner and caretaker for her younger siblings. As she pushes herself to function, Middle Daughter is hollowed out by guilt and fear. She’s haunted by the memories of her last conversation with Oldest Sister, who confessed she was secretly engaged to a white man, prompting Middle Daughter to tell Oldest Sister she never wanted to see her again. In the fallout, Middle Daughter becomes estranged from her boyfriend and best friend. As the story opens, she falls under the gaze of a grizzled “white man in red cowboy boots” in the hardware store where she stocks shelves. Calling himself John Smith, he dubs her Pocahontas and begins to stalk her. Despite her repulsion, she finds his attention compelling, an expression of her guilt. Instead of drugs or a razor, she punishes herself with the thing she reviles most: a white man living on her people’s land. The backgrounding of the novel’s mystery—Middle Daughter’s search for clues to her sister’s disappearance—weakens the book. Although the portrait of Middle Daughter cherishing her culture is tenderly wrought, the mystery’s resurgence at the very end creates an imbalance between a limp thriller and a heartbreaking family drama.

A flawed mystery nevertheless delivers an engrossing portrait of contemporary Indigenous life.