Indian Burial Ground by Nick Medina
Title: Indian Burial Ground
Author: Nick Medina
Published: 16th April 2024
Genre: Horror
Age: Adult
What’s it About?
Forty-year-old Noemi Broussard thinks her life might finally be starting to look up. She has a successful boyfriend - Roddy - who treats her right, and the pair are planning to move away from the reservation where she has always lived. However, on the very same night her beloved Uncle Louie returns after more than a decade away, Roddy is killed in what many quickly believe to be a suicide.
Back in the summer of 1986, strange and tragic events overtook the reservation where 17-year-old Louie lived with his mother, elder sister, and three-year-old niece Noemi. Beginning with the shocking death of a child with learning disabilities, these gradually escalated getting more and more gruesome, and seemingly creeping closer and closer to Louie. Bones went missing from the reservation’s burial ground, and animals seemed able to come back to life, although in a mindless form.
Now Louie has returned to participate in the tribe’s powwow celebration, bringing with him memories and secrets of what happened that summer, and how it connects to Louie, Noemi, and maybe Roddy too. Is Roddy's death linked to the history of misfortune that seems to follow the Broussard family, and what exactly did happen on the rez that summer all those years ago?
Sorry. I’d never known how much weight a word could hold until Luke uttered it.
Opinions:
Let’s start simple: I loved Indian Burial Ground. Set on the Takoda reservation (the same fictional tribe found in Medina’s previous book, Sisters of the Lost Nation) in Louisiana, this is a dual timeline novel that follows 40-year-old Noemi in the present day, and her uncle Louie, then aged 17, in the summer of 1986. The two stories eventually converge as Louie slowly tells Noemi all about what happened the summer she was three as they follow a dying coyote together the night after Roddy’s death.
Although there are two timelines/points of view here, it’s really in Louie’s story that all the action happens. Through his younger self, we learn the legends of the Takoda tribe, and follow the increasingly disturbing and terrifying events of 1986. It’s this story that really shone out to me. It was dark and uncomfortable, filled with more of a twisting sense of dread than jump out of your seat horror. That feeling of foreboding builds throughout the story into what feels like an inevitable final battle that pits good against evil, and the modern day against legend. The final battle was strange, and I feel that I might have more appreciation for it if I had grown up with my own tribal legends, but I loved the twist that came at the end and that I hadn’t even remotely seen coming.
“The driver ran for help. When she returned to Roddy, she saw a coyote standing over his body… with blood around its mouth.”
My stomach churned. I finally sat. Mom plopped beside me, wrapping me in her arms, while Uncle Louie, paler than before, inexplicably locked the door.
One thing I do want to note is that I don't feel that the blurb going around for Indian Burial Ground is an accurate representation of the book whatsoever. The blurb centres Noemi as the heart of the book, however, I found that her story almost felt like an afterthought compared to Louie’s. To me, it also lacked resolution, leaving me wondering why we had spent so much time with it. I honestly believe you could chop out Noemi’s story entirely, and it wouldn’t make that much of a difference overall, which is a shame as it felt as if it had potential right until the end.
That being said, this is a brilliant work of horror and one that I think will stick with me long after I finished reading it. The descriptions of the rez and its people were vivid enough that I felt as if I were there, walking its dusty trails and watching out for impossible things in the dirt. It’s a book I will be highly recommending, although I would also advise checking out trigger warnings in advance as some of the content is disturbing to say the least. Many thanks to Berkley Publishing Group and NetGalley for the ARC.
Rating: 4/5
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