Harvest House

Harvest House, a companion novel to Cynthia Leitich Smith's Hearts Unbroken, delivers a spooky mystery as it speaks to "the crisis of missing and murdered Indian women, girls, and two-spirit people."

High school sophomore Hughie Wolfe, who is "Muscogee-Cherokee-Ojibwe by heritage but Muscogee by tribal affiliation," had expected to be the lead actor in his school's fall theater production, but when the show is cut from the school's budget, Hughie instead volunteers at "Harvest House," a haunted house fundraiser. What starts out as a fun distraction devolves into a racist depiction of Indigenous peoples, including a "beautiful, exotic Indian maiden" role that is supposed to be an homage to the "spurned maiden's spirit" who haunts the crossroads where Harvest House is located. Meanwhile, "The Bad Man" is targeting local brown girls and there are reports of possessed wild animals coming to the girls' rescue. Hughie and his friends think there might be a connection, and set out to unravel the truth of the "Crossroads Ghost."

This is a story about Indigenous people, but more specifically Native women, girls, and two-spirit people. The mysterious Celeste, whose intermittent first-person chapters bear witness to The Bad Man's advances, stands in for those who have experienced tragedy and are too often forgotten, their histories erased. Smith (Sisters of the Neversea) draws on effective examples of microaggressions, bigotry, and exploitation to punctuate her point. But she also includes moments of joy: Hughie speaking to his sister in Mvskoke, the language of his ancestors, and doing seasonal activities with his friends. What results is an atmospheric, transfixing mystery. --Lana Barnes, freelance reviewer and proofreader

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