I had a love-hate relationship with this read. Love: I loved the characters, the set-up, the cultural background, and the rocket powered story. Hate: I hated the way the main character runs into danger, alone, even though she knows it’s stupid. The 4th or 5th time she did it I almost closed the cover, but I am so glad I didn’t because this read is powerful, moving, and difficult to forget.
The main character is Syd Walker, a Cherokee from Oklahoma who has made a life for herself far from home. She’s an archeologist, married to a dentist, and the two women are trying for a baby, though Syd doesn’t seem to be totally on board with the baby idea. As the book opens, Syd is examining the bones of a woman found on Native land in Rhode Island. As she’s on her way home from the site, she gets a call from her boss.
Syd works for the BIA – Bureau of Indian Affairs – and her boss is asking, in fact demanding – that she return to her tiny hometown of Picher, Oklahoma, to examine a skull that’s been discovered in a tree, sporting Syd’s ID badge in it’s jaws. Syd is reluctant to return home for many reasons. As a child, she and her sister and their buddy Luna were hanging out one night when masked men (though ultimately known to the girls) break in, separate them, and kill one of the girls and her parents. Because Syd had freed herself and her sister but not managed to save her friend, she feels a load of guilt and sadness she can’t seem to overcome.
Syd is also being trailed by the ghost of that friend, Luna, who urges her to return home and discover what’s going on. Syd reluctantly agrees, parting from her wife on something of a sour note, as the news of her wife’s pregnancy doesn’t fill her heart with joy and her wife knows it. Syd arrives in Oklahoma meaning to do a job of work with the uncovered bones, but she’s met by a wall of resentment, secrets, and heartbreak from her own family.
Her sister, a former drug addict, is missing and the family fear is that she’s returned to drugs. She’s left behind a little girl and a partner recently released from prison whom Syd is both angry at and incredibly resentful of. Her resentment seemed slightly unfair to me, but I understood her trauma and doubt – she’d missed her wedding reception searching for her sister, who had overdosed. She’d blamed the boyfriend, Cody, in part for her sister’s drug use. Syd is weathering the disapproval of her family as they resent her absence. They know things about her missing sister that she does not.
Whatever the reason for her sister’s disappearance, Syd’s fire and determination to find her is undimmed and she is incredibly (and sometimes foolishly) fierce as she attempts to find her. The plot also involves a dispute over the ownership of native land (much of it occupied by her own family members) as well as a meth ring and a series of native girls and women who have vanished over the years.
While there are many layers here, the main force of the book is not only Syd’s desire to find her sister but her own reckoning with her painful past in a way that will allow her to move forward with her life. Her wife has advised her to figure out what it is she wants, and that simple charge is the one that drives Syd as she reconnects with her parents, her little niece, her wild cousin and her canny and salty great aunt. All of her family have issues one way or another with Syd working for the BIA, which adds a layer to their resentment.
While I was frustrated with Syd’s continual plunge into danger I also admired her bravery and the love she feels for her sister, the love ultimately overcoming her judgement as she accepts whatever form her sister may be assuming in the present. The ending was so moving I went through many, many Kleenexes. This is a wonderful kickoff to what I am hoping might be a series. Syd deserves one. — Robin Agnew