Welcome to my stop on the Blood Sisters Book Tour! Scroll below for my review, book synopsis and an excerpt.
Vanessa Lillie's BLOOD SISTERS is an intense, eye opening, highly emotional suspense thriller delivered via the voice of Syd Walker, an archeologist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Rhode Island. Her mission is to preserve Cherokee history, culture and land rights while identifying skeletal remains of victims of violence and returning them home to their people. Syd is disturbed when she receives a request to return to the town of Pincher, Oklahoma - a place she fled fifteen years prior following an attack that left her best friend dead and her sister Emma Lou damaged in a way that left her permanently scarred and floundering in a world of drugs and bad decisions. Syd’s haunted by her troubled past, but the discovery of a skull with Syd's old I.D. card lodged in its mouth makes it impossible for her to refuse the case. Leaving behind her wife who's just announced her pregnancy, Syd heads back to her small hometown with the ghost of her best friend Luna riding shotgun in her mind, stirring up old disturbing memories. A number of Indigenous women have gone missing in the area and upon arriving home, Syd learns her sister Emma is among them. As Syd starts investigating, it's soon clear she's rattling skeletons that are making people in power extremely nervous. Once again, decisions are forced upon her people without proper restitution, but this time Syd won't walk away until she gets justice for both the dead and the living. If they don't kill her first.
BLOOD SISTERS focuses on one native woman's efforts to find the missing and return them home - whether dead or alive. The plot line is intricately woven, unfolding at a steadily rising, tension ladened pace through vivid prose that transports readers to the dark, desolate countryside alongside Syd while charging all with solving the mysterious disappearances while exposing the secrets held within the raped land before time runs out. The author's utilization of a ghost's voice in Syd's head to deliver the story is genius, setting an eerie, spooky tone while leading readers to speculate if the person is a ghost or Syd is hallucinating. It's clear Syd is in a precarious state of mind and holding on by a thread as she battles both inner and outer demons determined to take her down, all of which adds to the dark, malevolent atmosphere of this riveting thriller. I love that just when you think you have it all figured out, the shocking climax knocks you off your feet.
Vanessa Lillie has rendered a story rich in the history of Native Americans, spotlighting their continued struggles with drug and environmental issues, forced abandonment of their homes and land without restitution and the suspicious disappearance of Indigenous women for whom no one seems to be searching. Indications are this is the first in a series of books to come featuring Syd - an Indigenous, lesbian woman - as the lead character which is exciting, albeit a rare occurrence in the book world. Through Lillie's brilliant, descriptive writing, Syd comes across as a spirited, yet vulnerable character with strong ethics battling her own demons - one who readers will have no problem respecting and/or feeling empathy for. BLOOD SISTERS is a dynamic, engrossing, heart touching suspense thriller that's highly addictive as well as eye-opening, and it's clear it comes straight from the heart of the author. Highly recommended to fans of mysteries and suspense thrillers as well as readers who enjoy beautifully written stories with a spotlight on critical issues and injustices rooted in history that have existed over the years.
Synopsis:
There are secrets in the land.
As an archaeologist 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. Even though she swore she’d never go back, the past comes calling.
What happens to the land happens to the women.
When a skull is found near the crime scene of her youth, just as her sister, Emma Lou, disappears, Syd knows she must return to Oklahoma. She refuses to let her sister, or the remains, go ignored as so often happens in cases of missing Native women.
But not everyone is glad to have Syd home. The search for Emma Lou puts Syd in the crosshairs of local drug dealers looking to build an empire and vengeful vigilantes policing the abandoned mines, while government officials silence tribal rights.
The truth will be unearthed.
The deeper Syd digs, the more she uncovers about a string of missing Indigenous women cases trailing back decades. To save her sister, she must expose a darkness in town that no one wants to face—not even Syd.
Meet the Author:
She is the author of the bestselling thrillers Little Voices (October 2019) and For the Best (September 2020). She created and co-authored the instant bestselling Audible Original Young Rich Widows and the sequel is on the way!
With fifteen years of marketing and communications experience, Vanessa was a columnist for the Providence Journal and hosts a regular Instagram Lives with crime fiction authors. She is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma living on Narragansett land in Rhode Island. Connect with her on Instagram!
Excerpt:
Exeter, Rhode Island
Fifteen
Years Later
Tuesday,
May 6, 2008
I brush wet
dirt from the skull's damaged eye socket and wonder if my sister is dead.
The thought
is an old habit. Normally, I barely notice; the fear is like a clear film that floats
past my eye to be blinked away and forgotten.
Footsteps
crunch to draw me away from worries about my only sister, Emma Lou, in rural
Oklahoma. My focus returns to this hilltop near the Sandy Brook hiking loop in
Rhode Island. Where I stand is not an area for hikers. I am on Narragansett
Native land, which means I need to hurry to preserve the scene from whoever is
headed this way.
I drop the
toothbrush caked in mud and hustle to my backpack. I open the bag as I hear the
snap of someone moving past the yellow caution tape I used to lock down the
site yesterday evening.
Grabbing a
soft cotton sheet from my bag, I fling it into the air to cover the entire
skeleton I excavated from the earth this morning. An air pocket floats beneath
the sheet as if the bones are trying to rise and leave the shallow grave.
I narrow my
eyes to see who's coming over the hill. I half wave, relieved, at the sight of
a familiar too-thin face with neat brown hair. He's in his usual loose jeans
and starched yellow polo with a tribal seal stitched on the pocket.
"You
pretty far along, Syd?" asks Ellis Reed, the Narragansett Tribal Historic
Preservation Officer I work with the most. "Coroner won't like it."
"They're
short-staffed and sending an intern." I don't hide my annoyance as I toss
him a can of bug spray. "Starting before dawn means some college kid won't
screw up our chances of an ID on the remains." I pause and decide to stick
to this half truth. Sharing that I'm in a hurry and meeting my wife in a couple
of hours for an appointment will only lead to more questions.
"Kutaputush."
Ellis says thanks in Narragansett, then coats himself with a thick layer of
spray. These damp woods will have mosquitoes already out for blood. He tosses
the can onto the ground and then crosses his arms as he stares down at what brought
us here. "Appreciate the sheet."
Not that I
need to explain as much to Ellis, but it should be common practice to cover
remains. To treat the dead with respect and not as a spectacle. Especially
bones like these, uncovered by accident, because they were never meant to be
found.
"Can I
take a look?" he asks.
"I
didn't wait. I'm almost done," I warn as I retie my short black hair at
the nape of my neck.
The Bureau
of Indian Affairs, or BIA, says I shouldn't have excavated until Ellis, as the
tribal representative, and the coroner showed. But my new boss works from the
BIA headquarters, one thousand miles away, and from what I've heard about her,
she wouldn't let an intern screw up her dig site either. Not that I asked.
I lift the
sheet straight into the air and ball the fabric into my arms with a sniff of
the fancy detergent my wife likes. She was softly snoring this morning when I
gave up on sleep and came back here with my headlamp and excavation equipment.
After two days of finding nothing of significance in my geological survey of
the area, I was shocked to strike bone. With the last rays of sunlight at my
back, I made the call to Ellis.
He blows
out a long breath. "I'm glad you found her."
I nod once
and follow his gaze to where I've brushed away the layers of earth around the
delicate bones still wearing a dirty white dress. The arms and legs are fanned
out like she was making a snow angel.
I'm lucky
to work with Ellis because he treats me with respect, something the BIA hasn't
traditionally given to tribal leaders like him. He could see me as just the
BIA, the oldest bureau in the government. Created by the Department of War to
exterminate Native people, culture, and ways of life across this
"new" country "discovered" by men like Columbus and
colonized by Pilgrims and founding fathers, despite the tens of thousands of
years of Native life that preceded them.
The modern
charge of the BIA is different, of course, but the bad blood rightfully
remains. The culture at the BIA is changing, so there are more of us who see
our job in a new way, especially since it's personal to me. I've never shared
this with Ellis, but I'm Native, too. Cherokee from Oklahoma out here on
Narragansett land in Rhode Island. But I look white, and I refuse to be the
white woman who brings up her Cherokee heritage when it's convenient,
selectively dropping it into a conversation with people who live Native life
every day.
As part of
a new generation in the agency-and Native myself-I do my best to make inroads
with tribes and show that I'm here to help, not harm. But there's three hundred
years of terrible history that tells another story.
I also
greatly respect Ellis as a tribal leader who must live in two worlds. The need
to preserve the past but also continue building the tribe's future through
what's allowed by the government. He must find some version of balance between
what the tribe needs to continue existing-language, land base, culture,
medicine-and what the government will agree to give.
My role as
an archeologist is simpler. I see myself as a midwife to the past for the
future. To support the tribes by advocating for what they need to continue
traditions that honor their thousands of years of history as they carry this
knowledge into the future.
"Syd?
Did you hear me?"
"Sorry."
He clears
his throat. "Small cranium size."
I focus
back on the bones between us. "Even without the dress, the narrow ridges
of the eyebrows suggest female to me."
He crouches
near the feet. "What's the stratigraphy?"
I almost
grin at his question, which shows his knowledge extends well beyond what's
needed for his job title. It's something I immediately respected in him when we
first met after I took this job five years ago. I like to think he appreciates
it in me, too. Neither of us is a fan of the status quo, especially not when it
comes to justice.
"The
same layer of earth," I say. "Two feet four inches deep, except the
skull and feet were three inches higher on each side."
"Shallow
grave dug fast," he says with a sigh. "What do you make of the skull
fracture?"
A memory of
Emma Lou in a screaming fight with her ex-boyfriend floats past, but I return
focus. I want to step beyond the status quo of my job, too. To not let my
sister and all her problems distract me from justice.
I drop to
my knees and return to the position I was in right before he arrived,
toothbrush and all. I take away a few more layers of mud on the right eye
socket, where the fracture begins. "There's a section of avulsed bone on
the right cheek." I pause as Ellis squats next to me, and I point out
where the face was cut, starting at the left eye socket. "The trauma
extends from the inferior orbital border under the eye socket to the left
canine tooth root."
He tightens
his lips like a flinch. "Stabbed in the face."
"There's
only blood splatter along the left shoulder." I motion to the small spot
I'd noticed when inspecting the dress. "Her assailant-let's take a wild
guess and assume he-could have grabbed her from behind and stabbed her as he
held her. I didn't see any more trauma, though, so this was the only injury by
the knife. But that wouldn't necessarily kill her."
"You
can tell all that?"
"Best
guess," I say, because that's all I can do with the constraints of time, money,
and going gray before seeing any lab results. Plus, I'm not a forensic
archeologist, a specialist in excavating crime scenes. I studied it in school,
extensively, but kept returning to the land and culture over labs and bones-to
honor indigenous history and support projects that make the future possible.
Ellis rubs
under his eyes, as if he wishes there was more available than guesses.
"Keep going, please," he says with a weariness I understand. This is
not an average day.
I fumble
with the flashlight in my pocket but manage to click it on. The sun is only
starting to rise, and we need more light to properly examine the neck bones.
"This break indicates a laryngeal fracture. The attacker probably stood on
her neck until she suffocated or bled to death."
Ellis blows
out a long breath. "How old do you think?"
"Late
teens, early twenties."
"Just
the right age to disappear." He scrapes his knuckles under his
clean-shaven chin. "What about the dress?"
"Machine
stiches. No tag on any seams or initials sewn inside."
"We're
not that lucky."
"Well,
I wouldn't say that." I reach over to a brown paper bag holding our only
clue. I use my pencil to lift out a pink plastic quartz Swatch watch.
"Looks like something from the eighties."
"Yeah,"
he says with the lightness of memory in his voice. "My sister and her
friends had Swatches like that when they were teenagers. Probably
'eighty-five."
Trends in
teenage culture are fascinating, no matter the decade, but I stay on topic.
"Approximate year of death would help. We can see if there are any missing
women in the national database."
"There
were plenty of women that went missing back then," he says. "Maybe
ran off, maybe not. Few reported, though."
There's no
need for me to say what comes next in his reasoning. Even if someone did report
it to the police, it's unlikely anything would be done, let alone actually
filing a report or contacting the FBI, which has jurisdiction over reservation
land.
I ease the
watch back into the paper bag and set it aside. I doubt there's a print, and if
there is we won't know for a year. Maybe more. Not for old bones on Native
land.
As the
BIA's regional archeologist, I may not have legal jurisdiction to actually
investigate-that's usually a tribal officer's job-but these bones were found by
me on land that I'm responsible for. That's an obligation extending beyond
man's laws into the laws of nature, which I've always respected. I can at least
help by doing as much legwork as possible to bring a name to the remains and
answers to the family.
"I'll
get started with a missing person report first thing," I say, though I
don't hide the tone of my voice that suggests it's a waste of time. The FBI
manages Native land, but missing Native women and girls don't typically garner
their precious attention and resources. "She deserves us trying, at
least."
I stare at
the blood splatter on the white dress and worry again about Emma Lou. I
remember her the last time I was home. No one had warned me she was using
again. I found her strung out in our family's living room, under a picture our
mom bought at a Quapaw tribe powwow called Madonna of the Plains. A Native
woman in a buckskin dress gazing bravely into the distance as she holds tight
her baby in a cradleboard.
I've often
thought I carry my worry for Sister the same way, strapped to my back, but all
burden, no blessing.
The worry
grew heavier with Emma Lou's parade of boyfriends with short tempers who were
well trained in tearful apologies. But that was nothing to the drugs. My mom
had her dismissive attitude and Baptist prayer circle, and my dad had his
avoidance. It always fell to me to actually find Emma Lou and bring her home,
full of more drugs than sense. Then she'd do it again. And again. The worry
grew too large, and if I had kept going back home to Picher, it would have
broken us both.
The wind
unfolds in a gust that rattles the silent acres of trees around us. Chills
spread along my arms, and I wish I didn't hear my grandmother's words, but I
do: This wind is a messenger. There will be news from Unetlanvhi.
I'm in no
mood to search for signs of the Great Spirit. I'm fighting the idea of Emma
Lou's death taking root. As if my grandmother's god is saying this time the
worry of failing to save my sister will not painlessly float past my eye.
"The
intern is here," Ellis says as a van bumps along the narrow path.
The wheels
spin deep tracks in the spring mud and crush the plants and few wildflowers
edging the trail. I already don't like this intern, and I haven't even met him
yet.
I dig the
toe of my boot into the mud and try to release the worry for Emma Lou. I swore
I was done when I said goodbye to Sister three years ago in a hospital bed. I
haven't returned to Oklahoma since. Instead I am here seeking justice and peace
for what's been hidden in the earth.
"Let's
go," I say, relieved at the kick of anger instead of helpless fear.
"That intern sure as hell isn't going to screw up my scene."
2
The
coroner's van jerks to a sudden stop as if striking an invisible tree. The
driver's-side door flies open, and a tall kid dressed head to toe in blue
scrubs, a medical apron, and a surgical cap nearly falls to the ground. He
takes only a few steps before he starts flailing his arms and yelling.
"You already started?!"
In that
second, I am justified in my choice to dig alone, even if it's breaking
regulations set long ago. I glance at Ellis, then back to the kid. "I'm
the one digging. We start when I say."
"I
wanted to do it," he says with a whine in his voice. "You were
supposed to wait!"
"Wait
for the coroner." I cross my arms. "You're an intern."
"I
represent the coroner, thank you very much." He leans forward and jams his
balled fists onto his hips. There's something maternal in the pose. I almost
smile, guessing his mother probably uses the same one.
"Let's
try this again. I'm Ellis Reed from the Narragansett tribal office," he
says kindly, and steps toward the kid with a wave. "This is Syd Walker,
archeologist from BIA. There's plenty to do."
"This
dig is for my senior thesis." The kid's eyes go wide and honestly look
gleeful when he glances at the skeleton. "I have to know everything."
“Excerpted from BLOOD SISTERS by Vanessa Lillie published by Berkley, an
imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC.
Copyright © 2023 by Vanessa Lillie”
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