eyes.2c Reviews

Wisdom Corner : A Novel by David Heska Wanbli Weiden          ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Life on the Lakota Rosebud Reservation, South Dakota, can be tough and uncompromising. Not much work, the loss of spirituality, culture, and the ghosts of the past. Virgil Wounded Horse has been trying to reform himself. He has been acting as a local punisher.  When medicine man Jerome Iron Shell is killed, a much admired leader, who has been helping Virgil to reform, and then Virgil’s house is burnt down, Virgil knows he must investigate. A local construction company is going to tear down the old Native Boarding School and build an apartment and shopping  complex. It appears the land was illegally sold to developers. Jerome was part of a Lakota group moving to have the sale overturned. Now unmarked graves from the past, of stolen children, including Virgil’s aunt have been discovered.  Is the death of Jerome connected or is something else afoot? A solid read that makes one ...

Mask of the Deer Woman  by Laurie L. Dove       ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Carrie Starr  has taken the job as a tribal Marshall with Bureau of Indian Affairs for the Saliquaw Nation  near Dexter Springs as a way to transition back to the force. She’d been a detective in Chicago until her daughter had died from an overdose.  Carrie had tracked the supplier of the drugs, the perpetrator, down and left him with bullets in his back. Nothing proved she’d been there. Now she’s at a place her father had come from. Her brief was to look at the women who’d gone missing. So many! Currently she’s investigating the disappearance of Chenoa Cloud. Is she missing or somewhere on the rez? Her investigations will lead her into strange areas of tribal spirituality, murder, embezzlement, and a host of other challenges. So many problems, so many blank spaces, and when the hunter becomes the hunted things become very tight. A Berkley Group ARC via NetGalley.         ...

If I Stopped Haunting You  by Colby Wilkens      ⭐️⭐️ An intriguing concept but it just didn’t engage my interest. Two writers who dislike each other at a supposedly haunted castle as part of a writing week. They’ve both lost their writing mojo and hope for the opportunity to find it. Pen’s major problem with Neil Storm is that he’s sold out his writings for success. His novels don’t do their First Nation’s heritage justice. Fascinating! So that premise alone holds so much promise. This was a great springboard. That, along with the enemies to lovers trope should have sparkled, but I just wasn’t on board. I finished the title, skimming mostly. Not what I wanted or intended to do.  A St. Martin’s Press ARC via NetGalley.                                               Many thanks to the author and publisher.

Redemption  (Eva “Lightning Dance” Duran #1)   by Deborah J Ledford       ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Eva “Lightning Dance” Duran, is a policewoman with the Taos County Sheriff’s Department. Eva is a member of the Taos Pueblo nation. She liaises between the Reservation Police and the County Department. Her best friend Paloma “White Dove” Arrio has disappeared, along with three other First Nations women. A ll are Hoop dancers. It’s been some weeks, and it’s only now that the outside world becomes aware of what’s been happening. Eva finds a body in a hunting area on a borderline area between the County and the Rez.  It’s  one of the missing women, not White Dove, arranged in traditional ceremonial dress, that’s interestingly not genuine. The elders don’t want the FBI called in on Sovereign Land, even though it might give access to valuable data. White Dove had been an amazing Hoop dancer until on the way home from competitions she’d been in a collision. She was left inju...

Not the Ones Dead  (Kate Shugak #23) by   Dana Stabenow    ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Another satisfying novel by Stabenow. I can smell the cold crisp of the air, and taste the frozen mountains. Stabenow’s descriptions of this awesome, spreading Alaskan National Park are a delight. Less delightful is what happens here! Unexplained! A group of settlers are denying people access to public tracks. The roadhouse, center of the community, burns down. A mid air crash near the Quilaks, mountains a few minutes flight on from Paddy Murphy’s airstrip. Murphy’s sold his claim and up and left. But then there’s a mysterious extra dead body at the crash sit. What’s going on? Duane Jackson, the new post master, warns Kate about the new owners of Demetri Totemoff’s lodge?! And drones! I’ve had my reservations about them but post this read they’re now amplified.  What’s going on is exactly what Kate Shugak and her partner Jim are trying to find out, accompanied of course by Mutt, Kate’s half-H...

The Secret Pocket  by Peggy Janicki, ills. Carrielynn Victor   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A tale that tugs, confronts and horrifies. The Residential Schools are a byword for all that’s wrong with what happened to First Nations people’s in Canada. (This story is universal in its scope of what happened historically to First Nations people’s throughout the new world) The lengths the children had to go to to survive is a stain on any nation’s soul. To my mind the tale has a First Nations storyteller’s lyrical cadence.  The illustrations match the voice.  I was not aware that some children were able to go home. Interesting to note that “home” was always in different colors to those used for the school experience. The ingenuity of the girls sewing their pockets gave hope to their small community. The fact that they had to go to these lengths speaks louder than words as to the treatment they were receiving. So many talking points to open up discussions of the past, present and future for F...