Book Review: Indian Burial Ground | Nick Medina

While horror isn’t my usual genre, I’ll wade into it for the right book. Things I usually look for if I’m thinking of reading a horror book include an interesting premise (duh), a compelling setting, a broader theme or message, and nothing too gory (I’m more of a cozy horror girl). Nick Medina’s Indian Burial Ground seemed to fit the bill, so I gave this book a try. This is a complex and sometimes uneven story, but one that delivered some powerful messages.

Told in two timelines, the story is set on an Indian reservation and centers around a family. In the mid-eighties, Louie is a 17-year-old living on the reservation and bearing the heavy weight of holding his family together. His mother is barely hanging on, having succumbed to alcoholism. His aunt Lula got pregnant as a teenager, and she leaves Louie to care for her young daughter, Noemi.

Meanwhile, sinister incidents seem to plague the tribe. Someone has been stealing bones from graves. A boy with special needs thought to be deceased speaks from his coffin. A man is claiming that Louie’s mother has vanished. It seems that a dark spirit is targeting their tribe, taking over the most vulnerable members. Eventually, Louie escapes the reservation.

In the present day, Noemi is now a 38-year-old woman who feels her life has finally taken a positive turn. She has a new boyfriend, Roddy, who treats her well. Roddy has a career as a news anchor and the couple has been planning to move away from the reservation where Noemi grew up. Noemi is relieved to be in a happy place.

On the day her uncle Louie returns to the reservation to participate in a ceremony with their tribe, Noemi’s optimism and happiness are shattered when she learns that Roddy has died, allegedly from suicide. They say he threw himself in front of a moving vehicle. Neomi doesn’t believe this—Roddy was not suicidal. But that only leaves the alternative that something much more sinister is at fault… Could Louie’s long-awaited return to their tribal land have set something in motion, triggering the dark spirits that plagued the tribe three decades earlier?

There is an unsettling quality to this novel. The dark forces plaguing the tribal land are eerie and at times terrifying. The story heavily favors Louie’s perspective from three decades earlier, as he grapples with his family falling apart and the strange events happening on the reservation. The death of Roddy sparks terror of the same dark spirits returning, and speaks to the generational trauma within the story, but also that many tribes experience.

The characters are imperfect and have depth that lends an air of authenticity. I thought it was interesting that the author, Nick Medina, didn’t shy away from the stereotypes that have plagued indigenous people in this country for decades. Instead, he chose to boldly portray them while at times turning them on their head, and at others adding a humanity to them that speaks volumes about how our country has treated these people. Mental health, poverty, addiction—these are all themed that Medina explores throughout the story.

The tribal lore was the most interesting part to me. There’s a spiritual (or perhaps supernatural) feel to the events of the book, as though the people on the reservation are connected to other generations of their tribe and the darkness that plagued them. The idea that Louie may have triggered the return of something sinister couldn’t be dismissed, even if the reader believes the timing was a coincidence. Roddy’s death is the inciting incident and the one we are looking for a conclusion to, though it isn’t the sole focus of the story as much of it is spent with Louie in flashbacks to the events three decades earlier.

Powerful messages make this a win, despite some complexities to the narrative structure that made it hard to follow at times. The mystery is compelling and Medina writes with a vision in mind. The author’s note at the end shouldn’t be skipped.

Thank you to Berkley Publishing and Penguin Random House for my copy. Opinions are my own.

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About the Book | Indian Burial Ground

All Noemi Broussard wanted was a fresh start. With a new boyfriend who actually treats her right and a plan to move from the reservation she grew up on—just like her beloved Uncle Louie before her—things are finally looking up for her. Until the news of her boyfriend’s apparent suicide brings her world crumbling down. But the facts about Roddy’s death just don’t add up, and Noemi isn’t the only one who suspects something menacing might be lurking within their tribal lands.

After more than a decade away, Uncle Louie has returned to the reservation, bringing with him a past full of secrets and horror and what might be the key to determining Roddy’s true cause of death. Together, Noemi and Louie set out to find answers…but as they get closer to the truth, Noemi begins to question whether it might be best for some secrets to remain buried.