Blood Sisters by Vanessa Lillie

Posted November 13, 2023 in review Tags: 3.5 Stars

Blood Sisters by Vanessa Lillie

Genres: Mystery
Source: ARC, NetGalley

A visceral and compelling mystery about a Cherokee archeologist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs who is summoned to rural Oklahoma to investigate the disappearance of two women…one of them her sister.
There are secrets in the land.
As an archeologist 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. Though she swore she’d never go back, the past comes calling.
When a skull is found near the crime scene of her youth, just as her sister, Emma Lou, vanishes, Syd knows she must return home. She refuses to let her sister's disappearance, or the remains, go ignored—as so often happens in cases of missing Native women.
But not everyone is glad to have Syd home, and she can feel the crosshairs on her back. Still, the deeper Syd digs, the more she uncovers about a string of missing indigenous women cases going back decades. To save her sister, she must expose a darkness in the town that no one wants to face—not even Syd.
The truth will be unearthed.

I read/listen to a lot of true crime. A few podcasts have devoted at least an episode a month about missing and murdered indigenous women. There are so many unsolved cases that it is almost incomprehensible. So, I was interested in Blood Sisters because it features this crime. The story is fictional, but it focuses on the desire to solve these crimes and bring the women home. The main character is an indigenous woman and an archaeologist. She is forced to return to Oklahoma for her work and face her past. Now, one of the missing women is her sister.

Syd is a well written character with a complex story. She isn’t always likable or comprehensible, but I think that is appropriate given who she is. The mystery is interesting as well. What really makes the story memorable is all the details about the culture of the indigenous people. While the story is fiction, some of the truth is mentioned in discussing the missing women. The story itself seemed slow and it was a bit difficult to stick with at times, but it is a beautifully written story.