Book Review: Indian Burial Ground by Nick Medina

Growing up on a Louisiana Indian reservation in the 1980s, Louie finds himself burdened with more than most other teenagers. His father is absent from his life, while his mother drinks herself into oblivion and mostly ignores him. He gets along well enough with his sister, Lula, but she is more interested in going out than watching her young daughter Noemi, and so often leaves the girl in his care. Things don’t get any easier for him, as strange occurrences begin to pile up around the community. Someone has been desecrating graves, including Louie’s grandmother’s, and a wave of unusual and tragic deaths begins afflicting the tribe. Stranger still is that at each of the funerals, the corpses suddenly sit bolt upright in their coffins and seem to speak to those in attendance, Louie in particular.

He grows suspicious that the legend of a local vampire may be true as he begins seeing eerie signs all around him, but his kindly and wise grandfather and his rebellious best friend both insist that can’t be true and try to take his mind off of the matter. His morbidly obese neighbor Ern, who has extensive knowledge of the tribe and its legends and whose own mother has mysteriously gone missing, is more open to the idea. Or at least remains non-committal one way or the other.

In the present day, Noemi is now middle-aged and still living with Lula in the family home when she is informed that her boyfriend has died under suspicious circumstances. Though it ostensibly looks like an accident, some signs point to it possibly being a suicide. Noemi refuses to believe that based on what she knows of him, but as she digs further into it, she begins to doubt her once strong convictions. When her uncle Louie suddenly returns home, the past is brought back out into the light, and she hopes that his experiences all those decades before might shine some light on what has happened to her partner.

Mixing tribal lore with mainstream mythology, Medina crafts a creepy and original tale that is able to maintain an eerie and suspenseful atmosphere throughout. As is the case with much modern horror, the supernatural thrills take a backseat to the story’s human drama, which here is handled with care and proves more than compelling enough on its own. Medina doesn’t shy away from heavy topics like suicide and alcoholism, both of which afflict Native Americans at much higher rates than the rest of the population. There are myriad potential reasons for this, but here the author examines it through the lens of feelings of isolation, entrapment, and futility, as well as generational trauma.

Much like the legends he references, Medina’s story is designed to teach us a lesson: We can’t run from our pasts or our problems, no matter how hard we try; the only way to come out the other side is to face them head on. In imparting this wisdom upon us, he has crafted a memorable and moving story that is populated with characters who feel real, anchored by a mystery that will keep readers riveted. ★★★★★