We have a great request email for this one! Thank you to Lauren for sending this one in:
Amanda: Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse ( A | BN | K | G | AB ) has a romance thread in it and I highly recommend it. It’s more urban fantasy/post-apocalyptic, but there’s definitely romantic elements.Hello! Just this past week I moved across the country and started a new job at a college (I’m an academic librarian). An interesting fact about this college is that a large portion of the student body is Native American. Same goes for the small town I now live in. I’m sure as time goes on and I develop relationships with my coworkers/students/townspeople, that I’ll end up discussing romance novels (seeing as how I both read and write them). I would LOVE to get some recommendations of romance written by Native American authors, or at the very least, some novels that have Naive American heroes/heroines that are portrayed well. Could you all help me out?!
In YA, there is Hearts Unbroken by Cynthia Leitich Smith, which is also Own Voices. Disclaimer: my roommate works for the publisher of this one and I asked her for a copy to read. It’s also semi-autobiographical .
Sarah: Naked Edge by Pamela Clare – heroine is a Navajo journalist, and her culture informs so much of her perspective as an investigator. Clare is also an investigative journalist, I believe.
Not own voices: Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson series ( A | BN | K | G | AB | Au | Scribd ) (TW/CW rape) and Alpha & Omega (TW/CW: same) ( A | BN | K | AB ) feature Native American characters and mythologies. Mercy is a coyote shifter, or walker.
Can I also say, cursory googling of “Native American romance” pulls up some…results. Of the fuchsia and racism variety.
What other books can we suggest for Lauren?
Tony Hillerman wrote about Navajo & Zuni (I think). He wasn’t either but he wrote well with interesting information within the murder mysteries.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson writes beautiful poetry, songs and short stories, many of which have romantic threads. Own Voices!
I used to read a lot of Kathleen Eagle back in the day. She is white, but her husband is Lakota Sioux (they’ve been married a long time and have grown children and grandchildren). I’m not sure how well the earlier books hold up (she published some Harlequin Historicals for a while), but I always felt her characters (Native American or white) were treated as full-fledged, well-rounded people and not cyphers or symbols. Here’s a link to her booklist:
http://www.kathleeneagle.com/publications.html
Also, DALVA, by Jim Harrison (who wrote LEGENDS OF THE FALL). It’s not a romance, per se, but follows the heroine’s life on the Nebraska plains as she searches for the child she gave up for adoption and tries to solve an old family mystery. DALVA is white, the father of her child is Native American. I thought it was good when I read it (many years ago), but again, caution, as our cultural attitudes have shifted and it might not hold up so well.
Pamela Sanderson has an #ownvoices series Crooked Rock Urban Indian Center in a college town that’s quite good.
Heartbeat Braves (contemporary) by Pamela Sanderson is own voices and 99c!
Robin Covington is a prolific contemporary author who’s Native American, though I can’t recall whether her books have Native American characters.
@kaz159: I cannot believe Tony Hillerman slipped my mind as I was thinking about this. His writing was among my grandmother’s favorites. She used to recommend him all the time. Thank you!
A really good resource for more own voices and a good perspective in American Indians in Children’s Literature, Debbie Reese’s blogsite. She does mainly focus on books written for children and young adults but I’ve found reading her discussions of what to look for in books with Native American perspectives has informed my reading.
The Kate Shugak series by Dana Stabenow is a favorite of mine. The heroine is an Aleut and lives on a homestead in a national park in Alaska. These are mysteries and I think that there are around 20 books. The heroine has a dog who is a big part of the series. Lots of info about Alaska history, politics and life.
@Another Anne: Those sound really, really interesting! How violent are they? Thank you for the rec!
So there are no Native American characters per se in Lois Mcmaster Bujold’s The Sharing Knife series, but the Lakewalker tribes are clearly inspired by them.
The Jane Yellowrock series. It’s Urban Fantasy rather than romance, though. I haven’t read it yet—it’s on my TBR! But she is of Cherokee descent (I think. Again, I haven’t read it yet.) I’ve heard good things, though.
C.E. Murphy’s Walker Papers is an urban fantasy series (first book is called “Urban Shaman”) with a half-Cherokee heroine.
I’ve never self-promoted here but I’m going to today. I’m Choctaw and married to a Muskogee Creek. My Harlequin Desire series, Red Dirt Royalty, has a Chickasaw hero (Claiming the Cowgirl’s Baby) and a Choctaw heroine (Convenient Cowgirl Bride). There are also a number of native characters, both main and secondary, in my Moonstruck paranormal romance series about wolf shifters.
And now I feel all weird about posting this, but hey…nothing ventured nothing gained, right?
Not a romance, but the biography “Pretty-Shield, Medicine Woman of the Crow” is a fascinating read. She was born in 1856, and narrated her biography (via sign language and an interpreter) to Frank Bird Linderman at some point in the 1920s/30s. It’s considered to be one of the first narratives of female Native American life. I have no idea if it’s still in print, I inherited my copy from my late grandfather, but there were editions/reprints as recently as 2003.
Amazon tells me I already own the first Kate Shugak, A Cold Day for Murder (from 2011 – it must have been a freebie). It will now move up my TBR pile.
The price right now is $2.99, so not bad for the first in a series.
A recommendation for Dancing on the Edge of the Roof by Sheila Williams. A 41 year old African American changes her life due to a bag of romance novels. And along her journey she meets a Native American chef. There’s a lot more going on, but the Native American culture is central.
I am not sure how accurate her portrayals are but I like Jennifer Ashley writing as Allyson James Stormwalker series. It is a Fantasy series. The main character Janet Begay is Raised on the Navajo Nation, Janet can draw the power of storms to feed her formidable latent magic. So not really authentic native American but interesting reading.
I just added Pretty Shield Maiden to my TBR list, it’s still in print!
I haven’t read it but Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse looks really good. It’s urban fantasy.
Here’s Debbie Reese’s website: https://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com
Kari Lynn Dell writes amazing western romances. She is also a rodeo star (well a senior one) lives on a reservation in Montana, instagrams incredibly cool stuff about cattle and horses, and doesn’t take herself (or anyone else) too damn seriously. Writes characters that will come back to you again and again.
Fabulous.
Louise Erdrich is one of my favorite writers. She also happens to be Ojibwe. I wouldn’t call her novels romances, but well worth the read for Native American heroes and heroines.
Another Pamela Clare novel – Tempting Fate. Hero is Chaska, member of her Rocky Mountain Rescue Team, Engineer and son of Lakota Sun Dance Chief, Heroine is Naomi, an artist looking to reconnect with her Lakota heritage.
The late terrific Faye Robinson wrote “Christmas on Snowbird Mountain,” a wonderful tale set in the southeast US. May be o.o.p now but well worth a look.
Not own voices and not really romance, but the Jane Whitefield series by Thomas Perry has a Seneca heroine who helps people disappear and start new lives. She is motivated in part by legends of the Jo-Ge-Oh, the Little People who hide the hunted from danger, and regularly leaves tobacco offerings for them.
There was a BookRiot post last year:
https://bookriot.com/2018/01/04/reading-slump/
Stopped at the library on the way home from work after reading this at lunchtime and found “Lone Wolf” a Silhouette Harlequin book from 2002 written by Sheri Whitefeather at the paperback sale table. I bought it, of course, and it looks good!
Lone Wolf’s Woman by Carol Finch is a good romance with a Native American love interest. It’s been years since I’ve read it by I loved it. Carol Finch has some Native American heritage, too.
Not ownvoices but Stan Jones’s Nathan Active series about a Native Alaskan is good. Active was adopted and raised by white parents in the city but returns to his village to serve as a police officer. It moves into noir territory over the course of the series.
I’d like to second the recommendations for Pamela Sanderson’s Crooked Rock series (starts with Heartbeat Braves), and Robin Covington’s book Ghost (which is a M/M novella that is very hot, and is only .99 cents). I think Robin has another coming out soon, so keep an eye on her Twitter!
I also hear that PJ Dean’s Kindred is very good, and it won the Swirl award, but I haven’t had a chance to read it yet (I haven’t been in the mood for historical lately).
One of my books, “Bad Decisions” by Jocelyn Adler, includes a Navajo hero (it’s MMF with two law students and a martial arts instructor), but I want to be clear that I’m not an own voices author, and the titles above are.
I second Kathleen Eagle.
I also recommend Eileen Charbonneau’s Rachel LeMoyne.
@Batgirl — I second the recommendation for Thomas Perry’s Jane Whitefield series.
The books are action-adventure thrillers, but there is a little bit of romance in them, and Jane has to balance her regular life with all the danger that comes along with helping people escape bad situations.
This one isn’t a romance, but Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice was really really good. It mostly focuses on the lives of a group of people on a reservation in northern Canada, and it’s hard to explain without getting spoilery but it was excellent.
I don’t have any recs to add, but as I read this and both added books to my Amazon TBR pile and used Overdrive to request my library buy some of these books, I had to laugh at the damage SBTB rec posts do to the Book Algorithm Gods. They have to be like – We sense a disturbance in the force!… No, wait that’s just SBTB Rec League. Nevermind, false alarm.
Totally love the Jane Whitefield series and would second that recommendation.
I second the Jane Whitefield series by Thomas Perry a hundred more times, although TW for violence, especially in the later books. The first book, Vanishing Act, blew me away.
If you want historicals, Mary Jo Putney’s “Angel Rogue” has a heroine who is half Mohawk. It’s one of my favorite of her books.
These recs are so good. After a misspent youth stuck with the unfortunate mess that was Cassie Edwards thanks to my local library I’ve been looking everywhere for ownvoices historicals especially, and there are so many good choices here!
I have no idea how well it holds up or how problematic it is, because I read it years ago, but: Ride the Wind by Lucia St. Clair Robson. It’s a fictionalized account of Cynthia Ann Parker’s life. She was kidnapped and (kind of?) adopted into the Comanche in the 1800s. She ended up marrying one of the tribal leaders as an adult, and her son was the last free War Chief of the Comanches.
There’s a lot of romance, for sure, but it doesn’t end on the best note. For what it’s worth, though, it goes into seriously great detail on the daily life and culture of the Comanche. I thought it was fascinating and learned so much just from reading it.
Sarah — there is some violence in the Kate Shugak books. It has been awhile since I read the early books (she started writing this series in the 1990s), so I’m not able to remember the details of the crimes/mysteries very well. The heroine also hunts and fishes and there are descriptions of preparing the things that she kills or catches for eating, which might be a problem for some readers.
I have loved the quirky characters and the fact that some of the mysteries are based in events that happened in Alaska’s history. Also, the heroine is a booklover, her home is full of books and the series is sprinkled with scenes of reading and references to all kinds of books. The heroine stocks up on books for winter at a used bookstore, in at least one of the books.
I would recommend waiting until warmer weather if you decide to try them. The descriptions of cold weather are evocative and make me cold just reading them. Not all the books take place in winter.
Lori Handeland’s Nightcreature novels come to mind! It starts with Blue Moon, and most of the series uses a lot of Native American myths to fuel the paranormal aspects of the books.
Be warned though – each book is a standalone, and about a different couple. I was bitterly disappointed when I started the 2nd book and realised it had different characters!
Now that I give it some more thought, I’d have to also recommend Tisha, by Robert Specht. It’s not a romance from what I remember, and the main lady isn’t Native American, but the novel does talk a lot about how Native’s were treated back then, and the stigma around interracial relationships.
P.S. it’s a true story 🙂
@Another Anne: Thank you! This sounds really, really good. Thank you for the rec, and the additional info!