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by Vanessa Lillie
A visceral and compelling mystery about a Cherokee archeologist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs who is summoned to rural Oklahoma to investigate the disappearance of two women…one of them her sister.
There are secrets in the land.
As an archeologist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Syd Walker spends her days in Rhode Island trying to protect the land's indigenous past, even as she's escaping her own.
While Syd is dedicated to her job, she's haunted by a night of violence she barely escaped in her Oklahoma hometown fifteen years ago. Though she swore she'd never go back, the past comes calling.
When a skull is found near the crime scene of her youth, just as her sister, Emma Lou, vanishes, Syd knows she must return home. She refuses to let her sister's disappearance, or the remains, go ignored—as so often happens in cases of missing Native women.
But not everyone is glad to have Syd home, and she can feel the crosshairs on her. Still, the deeper Syd digs, the more she uncovers about a string of missing indigenous women cases going back decades. To save her sister, she must expose a darkness in the town that no one wants to face—not even Syd.
The truth will be unearthed.
To what audience would you recommend Happy Land? Is there another book or author you feel has a similar theme or style?
I have definitely recommended this book to historical fiction fans, especially readers looking for books by BIPOC authors. Just a few other historical fiction books I recommend (aside from Take My Hand by the same author): Where the Wildflowers Grow by Terah Shelton Harris The Seven Daughters of ...
-Janie-Hickok-Siess
"Combines Cherokee history and legend with contemporary drug and land problems in a gripping story of missing Indigenous women. Readers looking for LGBTQIA+ and Two-Spirit characters will hope for more about Syd Walker." —Library Journal (starred review)
"Lillie paints the beautiful yet bleak landscape with a fine brush. Readers who enjoy strong voices will be pulled in by the characters, while those who are drawn to setting will feel as if they are in Picher." —Booklist
"Lillie does an excellent job of balancing a riveting plot with a moving portrait of her troubled lead." —Publishers Weekly
"Blood Sisters sets its hooks on page one and then pulls relentlessly and colorfully through buried secrets and rediscovered Native heritage." —C. J. Box, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Storm Watch
"Vanessa Lillie's riveting thriller explores the elusiveness of truth, and the history that binds people together—and to a place—no matter the time or the distance. At once captivating and illuminating, surprising and powerful, Blood Sisters is a story that resonates." —Megan Miranda, New York Times bestselling author of All the Missing Girls
This information about Blood Sisters was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Vanessa Lillie is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and the author of the bestselling suspense novels Little Voices and For the Best. With fifteen years of marketing and communications experience, Vanessa hosts a weekly Instagram Live event with crime fiction authors and was a columnist for the Providence Journal. She lives on Narragansett land in Rhode Island.
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