The Bone Thief starts out with Bureau of Indian Affairs archaeologist Syd Walker, called to investigate a chilling case at a remote summer camp. Newly buried skeletal remains have gone missing—and a local Native American teenage girl has vanished too. As local authorities …more downplay her disappearance, Syd uncovers troubling links to an elite Founders Society, the descendants of colonial settlers who claim ancestral land rights.

The disappearances, it becomes clear, aren't isolated and seem to be an ominous pattern that has spanned generations. There are deep rooted layers of privilege and inherited power and this reminded me a bit of 'Killers of the flower moon', as the white men married into the American Indian tribes just to get mineral land rights.

This book is similar to her previous novel, Blood Sisters, as Lillie tackles the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW), offering a fictionalized yet resonant insight into systemic erasure and injustice faced by Native communities nationwide. She also brings back the character of Syd Walker, so if you read her earlier book, this part will be familiar as well. It is scary, disturbing, and very emotional. I love that the author is of Sioux-Cherokee descent, which gives the novel integrity, vulnerability, and a personal investment in finding justice. She also does a good job highlighting how the ways history can reverberate painfully into the present. (less)

As women, we see how men control the world around us, but Ann Malaika Tubbs gives us specific examples here that are blatant as well as subtle, and shows how they have permeated every aspect of society throughout history. You need only to read the table of contents which is …more structured as a poem to see how women's stories are distorted and ignored throughout history, how we are subject to men's rules, how they turn our strengths into weaknesses, and destroy our sense of safety. The chapter on how women are abused and objectified, reminded me of a famous quote: 'Men fear that women will laugh at them, while women fear that men will kill them'. Sad, but many times true. The author does a great job with all these topics and still ends the book on a chapter of hope, on how we can make a difference by coming together, supporting one another, and fighting for justice. (less)