As you might expect from the title, this is an indigenous horror novel, though it could just as fairly be categorised as general fiction. It's set among the fictional Takoda tribe of Louisiana, which Nick Medina introduced in his debut novel, 'Sisters of the Lost Nation', which is primarily a mystery but also blurs the lines between genres. Medina himself is a member of the Tunica-Biloxi tribe, also in Louisiana, so I can only imagine that he's basing his fictional tribe on his real one.

It feels cheap to bring up 'Reservation Dogs' as a comparison, but I'm not doing so because this is fundamentally Native American. I'm doing so because it introduces a huge cast of characters very quickly and they appear in two forms, because the story is split across two timelines. The primary characters, Noemi and Louie, who are niece and uncle, appear in both but at very different ages. In the summer of 1986, Louie is a young man and Noemi a toddler. In the present, Louie's an elder and Noemi is theoretically in the prime of life. Many supporting characters appear at two ages as well.

This was initially highly confusing for me, possibly because I suffer from aphantasia and so cannot generate images in my head of what I read (or what I remember). Medina doesn't blur timelines but he does, entirely appropriately, use relative terms when talking about people. In other words, "Ma" in the present is not "Ma" in the past, and I struggled for a while to distinguish between the two, along with a whole slew of other characters. It didn't help that Medina references a lot more characters to whom he doesn't introduce us, so it felt like I'd been thrown into a tribe at two very different eras and had to immediately remember everyone's names in each.

Over time, that settled down and I was able to follow what was going on and who was doing what. Much of that is because Medina's story isn't really about what we think it's about. The things that we think constitute the story are just details in a much bigger story that speaks, like 'Sisters of the Lost Nation', to life as a Native American, yet another reason why 'Reservation Dogs' springs very quickly to mind as a comparison. The two take much the same approach, even blurring genres for similar effect, and come to many of the same conclusions.

The primary difference is that, while there are certainly coming of age stories here, especially in the summer of 1986 when Louie is a young man making his first outfit to wear to the powwow and dance in, they aren't as pivotal as in the TV show. Instead, the themes are often more adult ones, like alcoholism, suicide and generational trauma. There's a balance between tradition and simply being stuck and also a decision point around gambling, about whether building a bingo hall might save the tribe or condemn it. These are huge issues and Medina covers them all very capably.

If none of that sounds particularly like the constituent parts of a horror novel, I should add that a huge amount of horror imagery shows up in the build and never quite goes away. In early chapters, a young man throws himself in front of a car, a corpse sits up and speaks, a dead snake crawls away from those watching it. Someone's dug up a few graves in the cemetery and stolen the bones, and Louie wonders if that's the work of the Takoda Vampire. Small wonder that he ends up becoming a professor who teaches folklore and mythology. There's voodoo and what seems to be a possession angle, when characters like Fay jump into a septic tank and try to take Miss Autumn down with her.

However, many of these characters don't feel like they're in a horror novel. Noemi and Louie could have been supporting characters in one of Joe Lansdale's 'Hap and Leonard' books. Ern, the obese neighbour who can't stand up any more, says very little but sees everything, feels like someone I'd meet in a James Lee Burke novel. To me, those are very telling comparisons, because they're both incredibly good writers whose genre work counts just as well as simply great literature. Medina is young and new to the business but he seems to fit perfectly well in their company.

While 'Indian Burial Ground' feels like a large book, it runs notably under four hundred pages, so it's far from being a doorstop. However, Medina effortlessly crams so much into that space that it feels like it's much bigger.  He also divvies up each thread and theme, weaving them together with panache, so that each of them feels like it's the entire novel.

And that goes far beyond the core stories: Noemi in a bitter struggle to grasp why her boyfriend Roddy would kill himself and Louie struggling to decide whether he wants to lead his family, given that his alcoholic mother isn't going to do it, or leave the tribe to find himself. Frankly, his return in the present day after ten years away feels equally as substantial, as he tries to reconnect with his family and his tribe with varying degrees of success. The horror subplots of grave robbing and Ern's missing mother feel just as constant too.

The only drawback for me is the one that may not exist for you, because it's hardly Medina's fault that I can't generate images in my head. I expect that this would play even more powerfully to me if it was adapted, properly of course, to the screen, big or small. I find it a lot easier to keep track of who's who when I can see them. I'd be interested to see how immediately immersive this is for readers who don't have aphantasia, or whether the majority may struggle a little as well to keep track of so many people appearing in two different forms in two different eras.

Either way, I'm interested in picking up 'Sisters of the Lost Nation', which I haven't read, and more of Medina's work. I see that he has a story in 'Never Whistle at Night', which is on my TBR shelves, so I'll try to check that out soon. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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