Winter Counts is a gritty multi-award winning mystery set on South Dakota’s Rosebud Indian Reservation and written by an enrolled citizen of the Sicangu Lakota nation. I enjoy both thrillers and Native American novels, so this was right up my alley.
The hero (or anti-hero) is Virgil Wounded Horse, a scrawny mixed-race boy who grows up big and strong and becomes an “enforcer” on the reservation. When federal or local law enforcement fails to administer appropriate justice, he steps in, hired by families to get some semblance of justice. He charges $100 for every tooth knocked out or bone broken.
When heroin—on top of already plentiful pills—appears on the reservation and local pushers drag Virgil’s nephew into the fray, Virgil follows leads to Denver then back to his hometown and folks he thought he knew.
As he works through this situation, he must face the kind of person he’s become and whether he even likes that man. He makes a decision to return to the “red way” to save himself, his nephew, and his relationship with the woman he loves.
Winter Counts, besides being a great mystery, is a brutally honest look at America’s historical treatment of Native Americans, the poverty bred into reservation life, as well as the institutionalized racism towards Native Americans. On top of that, it’s an outstanding bit of crime fiction with plenty of twists, turns, potential villains. I liked it well enough that I immediately downloaded the second in the series, Wisdom Corner.
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Winter Counts (Ecco, August 25, 2020) is available through:
Your local independent bookseller | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
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