Indian Burial Ground is dark and unsettling and beyond depressing, but I also think I liked it? It's not a fun novel or even a particularly enjoyable one, but somehow it just works.

First of all, this is 100% a horror novel. The tags on Goodreads are accurate, but NetGalley has it in the general fiction and mysteries & thrillers categories. And, I mean, I guess Noemi's timeline does revolve around a mystery of sorts (did Roddy commit suicide or was it foul play?), but the book more heavily focuses on Uncle Louie's 1986 narrative, which is very much horror-based. There are multiple unpleasant deaths and an evil spirit and a bunch of creepy scenes. If you're not a horror fan, be forewarned. Also, there are trigger warnings galore – children die, animals die, there's substance abuse, there's suicide, and mental health issues abound.

Louie's timeline is particularly riveting, even though it's by far the darker of the two. I especially appreciated the Native American mythologies that are woven into the storyline, and the climax of Louie's story is simply fantastic in a “bad acid trip” sort of way. I also found its portrayal of substance abuse to be incredibly realistic and powerful, and it definitely drives home the damage addiction does to both the addicted and their loved ones. And the scenes with creepy, smiling people crawling backward to their doom? Nightmare fuel, for sure.

Noemi's story is much more mundane than Louie's, but it's also incredibly sad. You can't help but feel for her as she attempts to navigate her grief surrounding the loss of Roddy. I have to say, though, that I would have appreciated a bit more active investigation into Roddy's death, as it mostly consists of Noemi texting with his sister and following a coyote around (but, seriously, why oh why does no one help the coyote pups?!). I do love how she and Louie lean on each other while they come to terms with their respective traumas, however, and their family as a whole is quite sympathetic. I also like the way the story is wrapped up, with perhaps just a little bit of hope but nothing too Disney-esque (which would be totally and completely out of place in this novel).

My final rating: 4.35 stars, rounded down. Indian Burial Ground is a creepy yet poignant read that deals with horrors of both the supernatural and earthly varieties.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for providing me with an advance copy of this book to review.

This is a fascinating follow up to "Sisters of the Lost Nation," set in the same general area and with a similar (though possibly more intense) blend of supernatural/monstrous threats and the all-too-natural threats of human violence, intergenerational trauma, and settler-colonization. (Relatedly, there's a fairly big focus on alcoholism and suicide, so do be warned going in.) I wasn't thrilled with the depiction of a very peripheral character who was developmentally disabled, along with a slightly more central character whose fatness is described in some grotesque ways, but I'm happy to wait for others to weigh in on those things.

Indian Burial Ground is a novel steeped in mystery, mythology, and political realities about life on a reservation.

Noemi has a boyfriend and her life is coming together. They have plans to leave the reservation as her uncle Louie did a decade before. Then the boyfriend commits suicide -- or does he.

Uncle Louie returns and the two search for the mystery behind the suicide. Some secrets are best left buried in this place where an elderly woman commits suicide and a corpse sits straight up and speaks.