Mysterious Deaths and Chilling Resurrections: A Guest Post from Nick Medina
From his terrific (and terrifying) debut, Sisters of the Lost Nation, to his equally chilling follow-up, Nick Medina knows how to keep us glued to the page (with all he doors locked). Nick has penned an exclusive essay for B&N readers on the inspiration for his new novel and takes us behind the scenes of his unsettling world.
Hardcover $28.00
Indian Burial Ground
Indian Burial Ground
By Nick Medina
In Stock Online
Hardcover $28.00
We loved Nick Medina’s unsettling, genre-busting debut, and couldn’t wait for his new book, which is best read with the lights on and doors locked.
We loved Nick Medina’s unsettling, genre-busting debut, and couldn’t wait for his new book, which is best read with the lights on and doors locked.
Two-year-old Kelvin Santos sat up and asked his father for a drink of water. If he’d been in his bed, there’d be nothing remarkable about that, but Kelvin wasn’t in his bed. He was in his coffin, hours after being pronounced dead from complications of bronchial pneumonia. Following his request, he fell back into his coffin, whereupon his family whisked him to the hospital. He was pronounced dead once again.
I read about Kelvin Santos in 2012. His death was the birth of Indian Burial Ground. It made me want to write about mysterious deaths and chilling resurrections, though that’s not all Indian Burial Ground is about. Like you and me, born to become bigger, better, and more complicated than we were at birth, the idea spawned by what happened to Kelvin grew into a story about familial bonds, traumas old and new, hope, perseverance, and love, but those things, like the where, when, why, how, and even the title of the story, would take years to come.
I don’t remember why, exactly, I decided to set this story on a fictional Native American reservation, but I’m glad I did because when I later read an article about two Native sisters, one of which had gone missing, I returned to that reservation and wrote my debut novel, Sisters of the Lost Nation. I left some questions unanswered in that story, namely What happened to Miss Shelby (who went missing ten years earlier)? and Who dug up the bones in the tribal cemetery? With Indian Burial Ground, those questions are answered, and new ones are posed, the biggest being Did Roddy Bishop die by accident or suicide?
As with Sisters of the Lost Nation, which addresses the very real and very distressing issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, I wanted to shine light upon another important matter impacting Native and Indigenous communities that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. Findings by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that Indigenous peoples in the United States die by suicide at higher rates than any other racial or ethnic group. In the last four years, firearms-related suicides alone have increased 66% among Native Americans. The stats are at all time high. Explaining why isn’t easy, though adverse childhood experiences and intergenerational trauma, combined with national suicide-prevention strategies that aren’t compatible with Indigenous value systems, likely play major roles in why this problem persists. Funding and research are needed to make change—two things that are hard for many tribes to come by.
Finally, I’d like to (re)introduce you to Noemi Broussard, whom you might remember as the thirteen-year-old who backtalks to her mom, Lula, in Sisters of the Lost Nation. Noemi is all grown up now and, as Roddy’s surviving girlfriend, fears that Roddy might be part of the statistics mentioned above. I’d wondered what had become of Noemi, which is why I brought her back. She endures a lot in this book. I find her inspiring as a result. I hope you will too.
Welcome to Indian Burial Ground.