First published 2026
Nate Yellow Tail wakes up in a hospital bed at twenty, his body broken from an accident that nearly killed his best friend. Five years have passed since the deadly events on the Blackfeet reservation that left him as one of only two survivors. His life feels empty and unmoored. When four older Blackfeet men offer him a chance to join their mission, Nate accepts. They pile into a beat-up camper van with a sacred purpose: retrieve the remains of the single Blackfeet boy who died at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School and bring him home for proper burial. The journey becomes a vision quest of sorts for Nate, a way to find balance and meaning. But when they successfully recover the bones, something else returns with them. The repatriation that was meant to heal old wounds opens new ones, and Nate must confront forces that followed them back from Carlisle.
Genres: literary-fiction, american-fiction, 21st-century, native-american
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, vision-quest
Setting: Blackfeet Reservation, Carlisle
Period: 20th Century, 21st Century
416 pages · Hardcover · S&S/Saga Press
Content warnings: death