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Books Like Indian Burial Ground: Dark Family Secrets and Supernatural Horror
Noemi wants an explanation for Roddy's death, and Louie knows what it costs to go back through the family's memories. These books keep that tension between an answer and an old grief. In some, the person looking for answers has to go home first.
Read my review of Indian Burial Ground by Nick Medina.
Nick Medina's novels and their connections
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Why each book belongs here
The Good House begins with another return after a death. The books that follow shift the weight between a sister's loss, the consequences of old choices, and what a place remembers about the people who lived there.
1
The Good House
- Similar because
- Angela Toussaint returns to her grandmother's house two years after her son Corey died there. Like Noemi, Angela has a loss she can't make sense of in isolation. The possibility that the dead left her a question to answer sends her into another generation's history.
- Different because
- Due follows a mother into the history of one house in Washington and the trouble her grandmother faced there. Medina gives Louie and Noemi separate accounts of grief and a reservation that changes across decades.
2
Bad Cree
- Similar because
- Mackenzie's dreams keep taking her to a family trip before her sister Sabrina died. As with Louie's return to an earlier summer, the memories have a force that makes them part of what the family is dealing with now.
- Different because
- The earlier events reach the reader through Mackenzie's dreams and the conversations she has after returning to Alberta. Noemi and Louie have distinct voices and timelines. In Bad Cree, being with relatives again is part of how Mackenzie tries to stop facing the danger alone.
3
Sisters of the Lost Nation
- Pace
- Gradually tightening
- Darkness
- Dark
- Romance
- Minimal
- Difficulty
- Accessible
- Similar because
- Anna knows what it feels like when something has happened to a person you love and everyone around you has part of the story. Both novels set that uncertainty on Takoda, where what gets remembered or passed on can change the way a young woman understands the danger.
- Different because
- The debut looks outward from Anna to girls going missing and a casino changing the reservation. Noemi's novel narrows the immediate grief to Roddy and gives Louie his own account of an earlier summer.
- Reading note
- Publication order lets you see the reservation before Louie's return. The two mysteries stand on their own.
4
White Horse
- Similar because
- A bracelet that belonged to Kari James's mother sets off visions and gives Kari a reason to ask questions about her family. Like Noemi, Kari has to decide how much to trust an explanation when the people around her have had years to make their peace with it.
- Different because
- Kari's own search takes the lead through present-day Colorado. Medina gives an older relative a narrative of his own, so readers can live through part of the past that Noemi has to piece together.
5
The Only Good Indians
- Similar because
- Lewis and his childhood friends have had years to get on with their lives after a particular elk hunt. Its consequences catch up with them. Like Louie's account of 1986, their story gives past events an active part in the danger people face now.
- Different because
- Jones ties the threat to something a group of friends did together and to the question of who will answer for it. Medina builds more of the present around Noemi's grief and the possibility of a connection she has yet to understand.
6
The Reformatory
- Similar because
- Robbie Stephens sees ghosts after he is sent to a boys' reformatory in 1950s Florida. Both books let the dead draw attention to what the living have endured, and both give family ties a practical purpose when someone is in danger.
- Different because
- Due stays inside the Jim Crow era, with Robbie inside the institution and his sister Gloria trying to get him out. The reformatory and the authorities who keep him there drive the suspense. Medina uses two periods to ask how an earlier loss still bears on a later one.
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