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The Back of the Turtle

Thomas King · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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❤️

The Round House

Louise Erdrich · 352 pages

A young man is upended after a violent attack on his mother, which leaves his family in turmoil. Well-written page turner that is hard to put down!

Indigenous IdentitySurvivor's GuiltLiterary FictionIndigenous History
❤️

Animal Dreams

Barbara Kingsolver · 352 pages

In this skillfully told novel by the author of The Bean Trees, a young woman returns to her hometown to care for her father and, without knowing it, herself. As usual, Codi is seeking to avoid life, but instead she finds plenty of it. She begins a complicated romance with a former boyfriend, corresponds with her sister, Hallie, who is kidnapped and then murdered in Nicaragua, tries to convince her

Environmental CollapseIndigenous IdentityLiterary FictionCharacter-Driven
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Wolf Totem

Jiang Rong · 533 pages

Chen Zhen volunteers to live in a remote settlement on the border of Inner and Outer Mongolia. There, he discovers life of apparent idyllic simplicity based on an eternal struggle between the wolves and the humans in their fight to survive. Chen learns about the spiritual relationship which exists between these adversaries.

Environmental CollapseIndigenous IdentityLiterary FictionCharacter-Driven
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The Man with the Compound Eyes

Wu Ming-Yi · 304 pages

On Wayo-wayo, every second son has to sail into the wide sea as sacrifice to the Sea God on the day he turns fifteen. Atile'i is one such boy. Being the strongest swimmer and best sailor on the island, he sets out to defy destiny. His journey takes him across the ocean to a vast and strange island, one which is built of material he's never seen before and devoid of any signs of life.

Environmental CollapseIndigenous IdentityLiterary FictionLyrical Prose
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Solar Storms

Linda Hogan · 351 pages

From Pulitzer Prize finalist Linda Hogan, Solar Storms tells the moving, "luminous" (Publishers Weekly) story of Angela Jenson, a troubled Native American girl coming of age in the foster system in Oklahoma, who decides to reunite with her family. At seventeen, Angela returns to the place where she was raised'a stunning island town that lies at the border of Canada and Minnesota'where she finds th

Indigenous IdentityEnvironmental CollapseLiterary FictionLyrical Prose
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Barkskins

Annie Proulx · 736 pages

"Bark Skins open in New France in the late 18th century as Rene Sel, an illiterate woodsman makes his way from Northern France to the homeland to seek a living. Bound to a "seigneur" for three years in exchange for land, he suffers extraordinary hardship and violence, always in awe of the forest he is charged with clearing. In the course of this epic novel, Proulx tells the stories of Rene's child

Environmental CollapseIndigenous IdentityLiterary Fiction
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The Yellow Birds

Kevin Powers · 240 pages

In this haunting fictional account, an Iraq war veteran contemplates the lives, including his own, devasated by the random violence of war.

Survivor's GuiltLiterary FictionCharacter-DrivenLyrical Prose
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Sabrina & Corina

Kali Fajardo-Anstine · 212 pages

Indigenous IdentityLiterary FictionCharacter-DrivenLyrical Prose
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The Lieutenant

Kate Grenville · 307 pages

As a boy, Daniel Rooke was always an outsider. At school he learned to hide his clever thoughts from his cruel peers; at home his parents were bemused by their bookish son. Daniel could only hope – against all the evidence – that he would one day find his place in life. By 1788, Daniel has become Lieutenant Rooke, astronomer with the First Fleet as it lands on the unknown shores of New South Wales

Indigenous IdentityLiterary FictionCharacter-DrivenBittersweet
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The Only Good Indians

Stephen Graham Jones · 305 pages

Indigenous IdentitySurvivor's GuiltLiterary FictionMale Lead
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The Age of Miracles

Karen Thompson Walker · 304 pages

The coming-of-age story of young Julia, whose world is thrown into upheaval when it is discovered that the Earth's rotation has suddenly begun to slow, posing a catastrophic threat to all life.

Environmental CollapseCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionLyrical Prose
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The Bone Clocks

David Mitchell · 640 pages

Following a scalding row with her mother, fifteen-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: a sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as "the radio people," Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura

Environmental CollapseLiterary FictionCharacter-DrivenLyrical Prose
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A Separate Peace

John Knowles · 196 pages

Gene Forrester looks back fifteen years to a World War II year in which he and his best friend were roommates in a New hampshire boarding school.

Survivor's GuiltLiterary FictionCharacter-DrivenBittersweet
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The Reader

Bernhard Schlink · 224 pages

Survivor's GuiltLiterary FictionCharacter-DrivenMale Lead
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The Sorrow of War: A Novel of North Vietnam

Bao Ninh · 228 pages

The Sorrow of War - by turns bleak and poetic, pellucid and cunning - opens with Kien, an infantry cadre from Hanoi, engaged in the grim business of retrieving and burying the dead at the scene of one of the bloodiest battles of the war. From here, the novel ranges back to Kien's youth and the pains of adolescent love, and moves forward to his attempts, as a struggling writer in postwar Hanoi, to

Survivor's GuiltLiterary FictionCharacter-DrivenLyrical Prose
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The book of fire

Christy Lefteri · 337 pages

Environmental CollapseSurvivor's GuiltLiterary FictionContemporary Fiction
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The Lowland

Jhumpa Lahiri · 406 pages

Brothers Subhash and Udayan Mitra pursue vastly different lives--Udayan in rebellion-torn Calcutta, Subhash in a quiet corner of America--until a shattering tragedy compels Subhash to return to India, where he endeavors to heal family wounds.

Survivor's GuiltLiterary FictionCharacter-DrivenMale Lead
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To the Moon and Back

Eliana Ramage · 448 pages

Indigenous IdentityLiterary FictionCharacter-DrivenBittersweet
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When the Killing's Done

T.C. Boyle · 369 pages

Environmental CollapseLiterary FictionCharacter-DrivenMale Lead
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Arcadia

Lauren Groff · 301 pages

In the fields of western New York State in the 1970s, a few dozen idealists set out to live off the land, founding a commune centered on the grounds of a decaying mansion called Arcadia House. Arcadia follows this romantic utopian dream from its hopeful start through its heyday. Arcadia’s inhabitants include Handy, the charismatic leader; his wife, Astrid, a midwife; Abe, a master carpenter; Hanna

Environmental CollapseLiterary FictionCharacter-DrivenMale Lead
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The Book of Jonas

Stephen Dau · 258 pages

When his family is killed during an errant U.S. military operation in the Middle East, fifteen-year-old Jonas is sent to live with a foster family in America and struggles to adapt before revealing the heroics of a missing soldier who saved his life.

Survivor's GuiltLiterary FictionBittersweetLyrical Prose
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A Land Remembered

Patrick D. Smith · 404 pages

Here are three generations of the MacIvey family, from dirt-poor Crackers to wealthy real estate tycoons, in an epic portrayal of the American pioneer will to survive against all odds. Here is the sweeping story of the land, how at first bare survival is scratched from it and then how it is exploited far beyond human need. Here is a rich, rugged history of Florida’s pioneer spirit and natural worl

Environmental CollapseIndigenous IdentityCharacter-DrivenMale Lead
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Minister Without Portfolio

Michael Winter · 330 pages

Recently single and listless at work, Henry Hayward spends his days in the solace of alcohol and his nights with a series of interchangeable partners. In a quest to recover, Henry applies for a citizen's observatory post in Afghanistan. Embedded in the regiment with his friends and fellow Newfoundlanders, a routine patrol suddenly turns fatal. And Henry, who survives, knows in his heart that he is

Survivor's GuiltLiterary FictionCharacter-DrivenMale Lead
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The Education of Little Tree

Forrest Carter · 216 pages

Forrest Carter recounts his childhood years, when he was raised by his Cherokee grandparents and imbued with the sense of communion between the Indians and their land.

Indigenous IdentityIndigenous HistoryLiterary FictionBittersweet
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