30+ Books by Indigenous Authors
by Jen Moyers (@jen.loves.books)
Hi! This is a 2026 update—my second update!—for this blog post with 10 new recommendations for you! These are perfect reads, whether you're still thinking about Indigenous People's Day or looking ahead to November's American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month. The titles with the asterisk next to them are new for 2026.
Next month, we'll be reading Legendary Frybread Drive-in (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm), a short story collection edited by Cynthia Leitich Smith, as our book club pick. You can join buddy read with us on Instagram: just reach out @unabridgedpod.
[From 2021:] This Wednesday, we'll release our Book Club episode focusing on Darcie Little Badger's Elatsoe (Libro.fm | Bookshop.org). This amazing YA novel focuses on Elatsoe, a member of the Lipan Apache tribe, and blends fantastic world building with a compelling mystery, along with some great paranormal touches.
Reading Elatsoe made me reflect on my reading year and some other amazing books I've read. (Be sure to read through the end for some additional books we've highlighted on Unabridged!)
Angeline Boulley's Firekeeper's Daughter (Libro.fm | Bookshop.org) - I absolutely loved this YA novel about Daunis Fontaine, a teenager who lives in a hockey town. An unenrolled member of the Ojibwe tribe, Daunis wrestles here with identity, her complicated family, and the impact of the opioid epidemic on her community. A powerful read, Firekeeper's Daughter captivated me until the final page. (Check out my review here.)
Cherie Dimaline's The Marrow Thieves (Libro.fm | Bookshop.org) and Hunting by Stars (Libro.fm | Bookshop.org) - In The Marrow Thieves, Dimaline has woven a book of equal parts gorgeous writing, Indian culture, and an all-too-realistic, post-apocalyptic world. I found myself writing down quotations from nearly every page, gasping in astonishment at each new revelation. The protagonist, Frenchie, opens the book with his brother Mitch, but soon, he's wrested from everything in his past as Mitch is taken by The Recruiters, representatives of the new society who are hungry for the ability to dream that they can find only in the marrow of Indians. The book is horrifying and hopeful and spun through with stories of past and present. I cannot recommend it highly enough and can't wait to talk about it on the podcast.
Last year, I I re-read The Marrow Thieves (via audio, which was excellent) and then picked up the sequel, Hunting by Stars, which picks up immediately after book one leaves off. This sequel didn't strike me quite as hard, but I appreciated the chance to read more deeply into Dimaline's world, into a consideration of the ways that the Canadian government resurrects the specter of residential schools as a way of controlling the indigenous population, who they've come to see as mere resources. It's a thoughtful and thought-provoking book.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (Libro.fm | Bookshop.org) - This book does exactly what it sets out to do: it moves through the entirety of U.S. history from an indigenous perspective. That sounds like a simple endeavor, one that should be available on library shelves everywhere, but it's not—I've read so many histories whose aim is to focus on this perspective, but they've always fallen short for me.
Dunbar-Ortiz's account is thorough but quite, quite readable. It's easy to follow and, while it stands alone, it would also be a great foundation for further study since the account of sources used by the author is outlined clearly.
This is an incredibly powerful, important work and is part of a larger series that I hope to work my way through.
*Debby Dahl Edwardson's My Name Is Not Easy (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm) - This story, set in the early 1960s, is told through the perspectives of five students at Sacred Heart School, an Alaskan boarding school. The narrators include Luke (whose real name is Aamaugak), an Inupiaq boy who is attending with his two younger brothers. All of the students attending the school are Alaskans, but their different heritages result in rivalries that often fade when their attention focuses on larger injustices.
Edwardson based many of the book's events on her husband's life. These include testing the effects of Iodine 131 on some of the children without their parents' permission (this was a widespread experiment conducted by the Air Force); attempting to eradicate their language; and sending his youngest brother to be adopted by a white family in Texas without his family's consent or knowledge.
The use of the five narrators allows Edwardson to explore the perspectives of teenagers from different Alaskan cultures—some are white, some Inupiat, and some Athabascan—and to consider the effects of the school on their own identities.
It's such a compelling read, one that elicited emotional responses while it taught so much. I also highly recommend the audiobook, read by Nick Podehl and Amy Rubinate. At under 7 hours, it's a quick listen and absolutely worth your time. A 2011 Finalist for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, My Name Is Not Easy is a book that I wish were a bigger part of the YA lit conversation.
*Louise Erdrich's The Mighty Red (Libro.fm | Bookshop.org) - As I've noted elsewhere, Louise Erdrich is one of my auto-buy authors. Her storytelling, her deft touch with quirky but all-too-real characters, her humor all combine to make even the most serious of novels a complete joy.
While The Mighty Red is not my favorite of her novels, it nevertheless lived up to my expectations. I picked up this book and did not want to stop reading, drawn in by the complex ties within and between families.
The center of this book is a relationship between a mother and daughter. Crystal and Kismet's love for each other, while smattered with the irritations of any close family bond, holds true even within the desperate rebellion of Kismet's teenager marriage to Gary Geist. Gary's mother is convinced that he has a personal angel watching over him . . . but only because he has had so many escapes from fatal circumstances that have befallen those around him. For both Gray and his mother, Kismet represents the hope that he can find happiness after a tragedy that traumatized their entire community (even though only one person knows the whole truth of what happened).
The truth about what truly happened unfurls throughout the novel, swirling through the romances, crimes, and secrets that define Argus, North Dakota.
The Mighty Red is beautifully written, alternating between deep humor and unbearable tension, yet it's somehow also an incredibly fast, captivating read. I loved it.
Louise Erdrich's The Night Watchman (Libro.fm | Bookshop.org) - I've long been a fan of Erdrich's work, and you can't go wrong with any of her many books. This one, however, was the first I've read in a while, and it reminded me of Erdrich's beautiful prose and her nuanced touch with characters. While there's a whole community represented here, two characters stand out to me: Thomas Wazhashk, based on Erdrich's grandfather, is a member of the Chippewa Council who is fighting for the rights of his tribe and the Turtle Mountain Reservation; and Patrice "Pixie" Paranteau whose search for her sister leads her away from the reservation to Minneapolis. Winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, The Night Watchman is the best kind of historical fiction. (Read my review here.)
*Louise Erdrich's Python's Kiss: Stories (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm) - I have loved pretty much everything that Louise Erdrich has written, so I'm not surprised that her short story collection Python's Kiss was my favorite of the six collections selected this summer by the Tournament of Books. Ranging from reflections on the past to visions of the afterlife to science fiction, these stories are all thoughtfully and beautifully written. I had a hard time putting down the book despite the lack of forward momentum that can sometimes plague a series of stories. Here, though, I couldn't get enough of Erdrich's writing. The physical book is also a work of art, featuring drawings by Erdrich's daughter for each story.
Jen Ferguson's The Summer of Bitter and Sweet (Libro.fm | Bookshop.org) - Our Unabridged Podcast Buddy Read pick for November 2022 is just a gorgeous YA novel. It focuses on Lou, a Métis girl living on the Canadian prairies, who is getting ready to graduate from high school.
Lou has known, for most of her life, that she is the child of a brutal rape—her father has been in prison, so she and her mother have felt physically safe from him. Her mother, however, had never recovered emotionally or mentally, and she's now putting in time to do so, pouring her heart into her new beading business and traveling craft shows in Canada to sell her creations. This leaves Lou at home with her two uncles on their farm, working together to run their dairy and ice cream business. She'll be working with her current best friend, Florence; her ex-boyfriend; and her ex-best friend, King, who has just moved back to town. Their friendship ended because King found out that Lou had been lying to him—and to everyone—about her background, passing as white.
The setup here is complex, and sensitive readers should proceed with caution, but I absolutely loved it. Lou is a complicated, compelling protagonist who trying to figure out her place in a town that often revels in its prejudice. Ferguson vividly writes about the way that Lou's knowledge about her origins has affected her understanding of who she is and of her feelings about her sexuality. It's a stunning book with so many amazing elements for a rich discussion.
*Stephen Graham Jones's The Buffalo Hunter Hunter (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm) - Jones is an auto-read author for me, and I think The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is my new favorite. (His novel The Only Good Indians was a favorite in 2020.) The book shifts between several layered narratives—a contemporary story about a professor seeking tenure who finds a distant ancestor's diary; the story that ancestor, a Lutheran pastor, details in that diary; and the first-hand account told by a Blackfeet named Good Stab. (The narration, by Shane Ghostkeeper, Marin Ireland, and Owen Teale, is phenomenal.)
This is a vampire story, a novel about justice through violence, a consideration of history and the way it's told. It has moments of horror, but the speculative elements are never as horrifying as the history in which those elements are rooted. What a masterwork. And don't miss the author's note!
Check out our Book Club episode about this book here.
Stephen Graham Jones's The Only Good Indians (Libro.fm | Bookshop.org) - I've been singing the praises of this book, which made my favorites list for the first half of the year. This horror novel focuses on four Blackfeet friends who make a mistake in their teens that haunts them—literally!—through adulthood. (Check out my review here.)
Oscar Hokeah’s Calling for a Blanket Dance (Libro.fm | Bookshop.org) - This book is a combination of novel and connected short stories, a consideration of the life of Ever Geimausaddle. Ever’s father immigrated from Mexico; his mother’s ancestors are members of the Cherokee and Kiowa nations, and Ever moves, through the book, between his different heritages.
Beginning in 1976, when Ever is a baby, the narrative shares Ever’s story through a multitude of voices. We hear from his grandparents, his mother, his sister, his aunts, distant relatives . . . but not, for the longest time, from Ever himself. The voices are distinct and opinionated, and they drive home the way the truth of someone can shift both because of the point of view of the storyteller and because we, as people, grow and change.
There are some recurring themes through the book, traditions that serve as anchors and which older generations are often striving to pass on to keep them alive. There’s a reverence for ceremony but for a ceremony that is alive and that changes with those who are enacting it.
Hokeah’s writing is stunning, and this is a book that I’m sure I’ll be revisiting. Calling for a Blanket Dance has become one of my top reads this year.
Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (Libro.fm | Bookshop.org) - "Since everyone had told me I couldn't do both [botany and poetry], I'd chosen plants. [They] told me that science was not about beauty, not about the embrace between plants and humans" (Kimmerer 41).
I could have chosen any one of a thousand quotations here to represent the beauty and wisdom that saturates Robin Wall Kimmerer's book (I seriously used SO many book darts!). Kimmerer's writing blends poetry and deep, scientific understanding; shares both Indigenous ways of knowing and the modern understandings that dovetail with tradition.
Kimmerer writes in essays which work well as standalones but also build on each other, so I took my time with this one but definitely built momentum as I processed her ideas. It's a lovely, challenging, illuminating read.
Amber McBride's Me(Moth) (Libro.fm | Bookshop.org) - Amber McBride's Me (Moth) was our Unabridged Podcast Buddy Read pick for June 2022—what a joy this one was to re-read. I read it in audio the first time and in print the second, and both formats work beautifully, though I loved the chance to savor the verse in print.
The first time around, I went into Amber McBride's Me (Moth) knowing very little, and I recommend that you do the same, so I'm going to keep this review very low on summary. It's a novel in verse about a girl named Moth whose family (her parents and sibling) died in a car accident. Moth is grieving, surviving, recovering . . . sort of. She meets a boy named Sani, and they set out on a road trip, both determined to find themselves and their roots.
I don't want to say much more. I listened to this one the first time on audio, which was fantastic (McBride reads it), and reading it in print worked just as well. Moth is a beautifully complex character dealing with an incredibly complicated situation. I absolutely loved this book.
N. Scott Momaday's The Way to Rainy Mountain (Bookshop.org) - All right, I'll admit: I'm cheating a little bit here. It's been years since I read the whole of Momaday's memoir (first published in 1969), but I revisited it this year when I taught an anthologized chapter of it in my class. It reminded me of the beauty of Momaday's writing and the power of the journey he takes to retrace the steps of his Kiowa ancestors after his grandmother's death. I'll definitely be re-reading the entire book soon.
*Rebecca Nagle's By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm) - This book has been sitting on my shelf for several years (which is why it was on my #26backlistfor2026 list this year), and I'm so regretful that it took me so long to pick it up.
Nagle shares, in alternating chapters, two stories. First is the case of a Muscogee citizen, Patrick Murphy, who is on death row for murdering another Muscogee citizen on tribal land. His appeal made its way through the courts and eventually landed in the Supreme Court, leading to a decision about the status of several reservations in Oklahoma. In the other chapters, Nagle details the forced exile of the Muscogee people from their traditional lands to Oklahoma, laying the groundwork for Murphy's story.
Nagle weaves her own, personal story through the text, as well, sharing the way her life relates to the main storylines.
I could hardly put down this remarkable text, which develops with great urgency and deep sorrow. It's an incredible piece of reporting.
*Tommy Orange's Wandering Stars (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm) - Tommy Orange's There There is one of my favorite books. I've read it four or five times, even though it was just published in 2018: we covered it on the podcast, and now I offer it as a choice in my classroom. It works beautifully both in print and audio. It's incredibly brilliant, moving, powerful.
I share all of this to show just how high my expectations were going into Wandering Stars, the sequel to There There. Were they too high? Undoubtedly.
Wandering Stars begins in 1864, taking us back to the generations preceding There There and delving into the history of the ancestors of There There's characters. Orange takes on the boarding schools and separations, the massacres and reservations, the horrific conditions that have characterized so much of U.S. history in the country's treatment of its indigenous citizens.
Then, the book catches up with There There, picking up right where book one left off (no spoilers here!).
Wandering Stars is incredibly moving, and I loved reuniting with the characters I'd come to care for so deeply. This novel focuses on the ways that addiction has wound its way through the generations, having an undeniable impact on each new descendant.
While this sequel didn't quite live up to There There for me, I don't know what would have done so. But I'm incredibly glad that I read Wandering Stars.
*Mary Annette Pember's Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm) - Medicine River offers such a rich consideration of the history and impact of Indian boarding schools from both a broad, zoomed-out perspective and an incredible personal, closely analyzed narrative. Pember blends her own journey as the daughter of a woman who was deeply affected by her own, traumatic experiences with a look at the influence of this trauma on a larger scale has had on our entire North American societies.
Pember's research is evident throughout the text, but it's the stories that connect that research that made the book resonate so deeply. While this topic is one I've read about before, this book is an important addition to our understanding of this era in our history.
*Mona Susan Power's A Council of Dolls (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm) - This stunning novel moves back in time, through three generations of Dakota girls whose lives center the ways that their family has been affected by the residential schools that strove to decimate their language and culture. It's a powerful story whose journey highlights the ways that generational trauma manifests.
*Waubgeshig Rice's Moon of the Crusted Snow (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm) - "Their ancestors were displaced from their original homeland in the south, and the white people who forced them here had never intended for them to survive the collapse of the white man's modern systems further withered the Anishinaabe here, but they refused to wither completely, and a core of dedicated people had worked tirelessly to create their own settlement away from this town."
Waubgeshig Rice's Moon of the Crusted Snow, an Unabridged Podcast Book Club pick, is incredible. It's a postapocalyptic novel set in an Anishinaabe community in the far North. First of all, I think the writing style is just perfect for this text. It is so spare, and so at times it verges on objective in a way that really worked because I think you can feel the emotions roiling beneath the surface without having to have Rice write out every single one.
One element of the book that is fascinating is the way that their isolation works for and against them and the ways that some of them have held on to their Anishinaabe heritage has made them more equipped to survive. Rice shares the history of the community, of their forced removal to a region where they had not historically lived. But their community is so resilient and finds a way to thrive in their new home, and that resilience comes to the forefront again as they face a new set of challenges.
The book does focus particularly on the family of Evan Whitesky, and we come to know him well, but the ways that Rice portrays the community were the real standout for me.
You can listen to our episode here.
*Waubgeshig Rice's Moon of the Turning Leaves (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm) - I was eager to get to the sequel, Moon of the Turning Leaves. No spoilers, but it's set twelve years after the end of book one and continues exploring the fate of an Anishinaabe community in a postapocalyptic world.
Everything I loved about book one is here. In my earlier review, I highlighted the beauty of the spare writing, the ways that the objectivity of description makes the emotional richness sneak up on me even more powerfully.
I won't say anything else: I'll just encourage you to pick up both of these books soon, and be ready to be captivated.
Rebecca Roanhorse's Trail of Lightning (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm) and Storm of Locusts (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm) - Rebecca Roanhorse's The Sixth World series is a brilliant, monster-hunting tale centered on a tough, grumpy female protagonist. Maggie Hoskie, also known as the Monsterkiller, came out of a horrible trauma with clan powers—she's really good at killing—and a problematic mentor/god, Neizgháni, who has since abandoned her for reasons unknown to her. She had given up monster hunting after he left but is pulled back in by promises that she'll be paid well.
The story, based in Navajo stories, takes place in a postapocalyptic realm, after the Big Water flooded most of the United States and left the land (Dinétah) occupied by the Diné or Navajo people walled off from the restof what remains.
Maggie is alone, mostly, but as her quest continues, Roanhorse introduces other vibrant characters, some of whom are allies and others are . . . complicated.
The twists and turns of the plot here are great, but for me, it's the characters who shine.
Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony (Libro.fm | Bookshop.org) - Like The Way to Rainy Mountain, Ceremony had been a book I had loved but not read for decades (since college, when I read them both!). I decided to pick it up early this year and was blown away again by the story of Tayo, a veteran of World War II, who finds his life and world changed when he returns to his Laguna Pueblo reservation. The novel blends prose and poetry, incorporating Pueblo myth that parallels Tayo's experience. (Here's my review.)
Jesse Thistle's From the Ashes: My Story of Being Métis, Homeless, and Finding My Way (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm) - This powerful memoir was fabulous on audio (it was read by the author) and has really stayed with me through 2021. Thistle's childhood was full of turmoil, and as he grew up, that turmoil only grew. Thistle works through addiction, homelessness, and total rejection by his family to find a new strength and the ability to reach out again to those he loved. (You can find my review here.)
Diane Wilson's The Seed Keeper (Libro.fm | Bookshop.org) - Another five-star book from the #readwithtoni buddy read! Diane Wilson's The Seed Keeper is a gorgeous novel about one woman's attempt to recapture her lost family and heritage.
Rosalie Iron Wing was removed from her Dakhóta family after the death of her single father and raised by strangers. Now an adult, she is seeking to reconnect with her family's story. After decades away, she returns to the cabin where she lived with her dad and begins to search again for the family she has lost.
The Seed Keeper moves back and forth in history, traveling back several generations, sharing the voices and experiences of past generations and of other figures in Rosalie's life. But it's Rosalie's life that's the focus. Despite her separation from her family, the memories of all that her father taught her have stayed with her, and she's tried to hold on.
There's a focus here—as the title reveals—on seeds as both a literal connection with her ancestors and a metaphor for the hope that Rosalie can reforge the culture that she's been seeking for so long. This is also a beautiful fiction companion to Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass, which Wilson mentions in her acknowledgments.
I didn't read all of these next books this year, but I wanted to be sure to highlight some other books and posts that have been a focus on the podcast/blog:
*Michael J. Bennett's Better the Blood (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm) - Episode 256
Eric Gansworth's Apple: Skin to the Core (Libro.fm | Bookshop.org) - Episode 172
*Gary Lonesborough's Ready When You Are (Bookshop.org) - Episode 268
Tommy Orange's There There (Libro.fm | Bookshop.org) - Episode 146
Katherena Vermette's The Break (Bookshop.org) - Review
(A note to our readers: click on the hashtags above to see our other blog posts with the same hashtag.)
Interested in what else we're reading? Check out our Featured Books page.
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