Blood Sisters is a thrilling mystery novel by Vanessa Lillie, a member of the Cherokee Nation, about Syd Walker, a Cherokee woman from eastern Oklahoma, who is working as an archaeologist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). This is the government agency responsible for committing atrocities against Native Americans in the past, and Syd’s family doesn’t understand why she works for them. She says she wants to help reform the BIA from the inside, and draw attention to the crimes committed by the agency.
Syd is the victim of a horrific crime that happened fifteen years before (in 1993—the novel, although it was published in 2023, takes place in 2008), when two masked men broke into the house where she and her sister Emma Lou were staying with their friend Luna. Syd, who was fifteen years old at the time, managed to save herself and Emma Lou, but Luna and her parents were killed. Lillie explains in her author’s note that the events of the novel are inspired by a real crime, still unsolved, so this probably explains the time frame. Syd has been haunted by this event ever since—literally, since Luna’s ghost often appears to her and encourages her to investigate the crime in the “present” day.
After the death of her friend, Syd left her hometown of Picher, Oklahoma, and started a new life for herself in Rhode Island with her wife, Mal, an optometrist. Mal has been trying to get pregnant and has finally succeeded. Syd has mixed feelings about this. She is happy for Mal, but she does not especially want to be a parent, and Mal knows it. Syd is currently working on an archaeological dig near her home, where she finds the skeleton of a Native woman who disappeared many years ago, when she gets a call from her boss, telling her that a skull has been found near Syd’s hometown in Oklahoma, at the very site of the horrific murders Syd witnessed as a girl.
At first Syd doesn’t want to go back to her home, but when she finds out the skull had her old ID badge stuck in its jaw, she knows someone meant for her to find it. So she returns to Picher, only to find out that her sister, Emma Lou, has gone missing. Emma Lou is a former drug addict, but Syd thinks she has been clean for a while now, and she is the mother of a delightful little girl, Gracie. Her partner and Gracie’s father, Cody, has just been released from prison. Syd blames him, rather unfairly as it turns out, for Emma Lou’s addiction and now her disappearance. She is determined to find her sister.
Along the way, Syd must deal with the resentment of her family and the community toward her. They have not forgiven her for leaving so many years ago. Instead of seeing it as a need to escape the traumatic events of the past, they think Syd has turned her back on them. And, although this is not emphasized, it seems that some of them don’t approve of her being gay. So Syd is often alone in her quest to save her sister, and to discover who the skull belongs to, and who put it at the scene of the crime that happened when Syd and her sister were girls.
Syd’s journey forces her to re-examine that crime, and she realizes her memory of the events is not perfect, and the actual events don’t always reflect well on her. So she must come to terms with the past, as well as finding her sister and discovering what happened to the murdered woman in the present. Along the way, her investigation uncovers a drug ring involving Mexican cartels, as well as a shady land deal where people are being offered buyouts at a fraction of the price they had paid, for land that was originally stolen from Indigenous people.
Very often in her quest, Syd decides to go off into danger alone, when she could easily have chosen to go with someone else. This is frustrating, but part of her nature as a loner, which all goes back to the tragic events of her past. Luna’s ghost is always reproaching her for it. Despite the danger, she survives, and the last part of the book is the most thrilling. It’s more violent than most of the books I like, but I couldn’t put it down. There is a wonderful twist at the end, which I will not spoil.
Syd is a wonderful character, strong and resilient, but with a vulnerable side stemming from past events. Her love for her sister and her murdered friend, and her determination to find her sister, are what motivates her, but her relationship with her wife, Mal, suffers because of it and Mal, understandably, decides to move back in with her family while Syd is in Oklahoma. The couple will have to work out their differences, which are not completely resolved in this book. I am hoping for a sequel, even though I haven't seen anything about one yet. Syd would make a great series character.
The author, Vanessa Lillie, has much in common with Syd. She is also a Cherokee woman who grew up in eastern Oklahoma and now lives in Rhode Island. Her first books were cozy mysteries. This one is much darker. As I said above, it’s more violent than what I usually read, but it is so compelling that I could not put it down. I loved the setting and the character of Syd, as well as some of the secondary characters such as her cousin Rayna, who, like Emma Lou, is a former drug addict and who has just been released from prison, but who has a heart of gold, Syd’s salty great-aunt, and her imaginative little niece, Gracie. Above all, the book draws the reader’s attention to the tragedy of the many Indigenous women and girls who have gone missing over the years, the crimes unsolved through lack of effort. Lillie includes a fascinating list of books by Indigenous authors at the end of the book. Blood Sisters is the perfect read for Native American Heritage Month.
Blood Sisters is available as an ebook via OverDrive.