Blood Sisters - by Vanessa Lillie (Hardcover)

About the Book

"A powerful mystery about a Native American archaeologist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs who must reckon with her past when she is called back to Oklahoma to investigate both the disappearance of her sister and a new case of a missing Native girl that turns up evidence with her name on it. Syd Walker fled her rural Oklahoma hometown-scarred by abandoned mines and a mounting opioid crisis-and never looked back. Now, she lives in Rhode Island as an archaeologist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. It's Syd's job to make sure the Indigenous past isn't erased so that their future is preserved, too. When a woman's skull is found by local Indian Affairs authorities and Syd's sister is reported missing, she knows she must return home. She doesn't want her sister, Emma Lou, to become another statistic in the rising number of missing Native women cases that go uninvestigated. But not everyone is glad to have Syd home. After all, she still works for the BIA. Class tensions, land disputes, and the aftermath of a traumatizing act of violence from her youth come roaring back. Syd must battle her own demons and those set on destroying her town and her people if she's ever going to find Emma Lou"--

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"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 Front

"Bingeworthy. A propulsive story of familial fault lines with as much to say about the dark side of people as the potential for redemption."
--Caroline Kepnes, New York Times bestselling author of the You series

"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

"Combines pulse-pounding action with Cherokee myth and customs. I loved Syd Walker, a compelling new character who's dealing with her own disturbing family history while trying to unravel the disappearance of several Native women. I hope we'll see more of Syd Walker soon!"
--David Heska Wanbli Weiden, award-winning author of Winter Counts

"[A] tale with all the twisting fury of a tornado. Set on the complex checkerboard of Indian land in northeastern Oklahoma, it delves deeply and dramatically into the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women. But it also mines the rich territory of family, kinship, love, loyalty, guilt, and regret. Vanessa Lillie is a remarkable and courageous storyteller and an important Native voice. I recommend this book with all my heart and the hope that it will make a difference."
--William Kent Krueger, New York Times bestselling author of This Tender Land

"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)

"A critically important and riveting story of sisterhood, love, kinship and the search for justice in a federal system that has long ignored the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and Two-Spirit People. Lillie illuminates Native womens' simultaneous erasure and inhuman treatment with sensitivity, ingenuity and passion, powerfully elucidating all the ways that MMIWG2S are not missing by any fault of their own."
--Chelsea T. Hicks, author of A Calm & Normal Heart

About the Author

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.