5 Reads to Put on Your TBR List for Native American Heritage Month

Author Vanessa Lillie, of Providence, has penned seven novels. She’s shown with her dog, Violet. Photograph courtesy of Vanessa Lillie/portrait by Brittanny Taylor.

In honor of national Native American Heritage Month, Rhode Island Monthly turned to Providence’s Vanessa Lillie, a USA Today-bestselling author, for a reading list featuring fellow Indigenous writers. A citizen of the Cherokee Nation originally from Oklahoma, Lillie created the Syd Walker thriller series, including The Bone Thief, a Rhode Island-set mystery that highlights the Narragansett Tribe’s history and resilience. She shares five titles with us.

Fiction

The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters

Cover courtesy of the publishers

A perfect book club pick, Lillie says. The bestselling debut by Mi’kmaq author Amanda Peters follows a child who goes missing from Maine’s blueberry fields while her family works the harvest nearby. Spanning five decades, the mystery explores identity and loss, as well as its lasting effects on Indigenous communities, while offering what Lillie calls an unexpected sense of hope.

Fire Exit by Morgan Talty

Cover courtesy of the publishers

Set near the Penobscot Reservation in Maine, the narrative centers on Charles, whose life is complicated by his mother’s advancing dementia and his efforts to reach a daughter who doesn’t yet know he exists. Lillie characterizes Talty’s deeply reflective literary style as an exploration of identity, “by blood and proximity.”

Nonfiction/Memoir

Nothing More of This Land by Joseph V. Lee

Cover courtesy of the publishers

Lillie calls this memoir required reading for every Martha’s Vineyard vacationer. She interviewed Lee, a citizen of the Aquinnah Wampanoag, at Providence’s Riffraff Bookstore & Bar, where he discussed spending summers on the Vineyard, both within his tribal community and working the family business, Hatmarcha Gifts, at Gay Head Cliffs. A journalist
by trade, Lee explores the experience of being Native around the world. NPR included it in its 2025 Books We Love list.

Middle Grade

Colonization and the Wampanoag Story by Linda Coombs

Cover courtesy of the publishers

For middle-grade readers, or any reader, Lillie insists, this book pairs historical context with a narrative that follows a young Wampanoag girl before and after European colonization. An Aquinnah Wampanoag historian who spent thirty years with Plimoth Patuxet Museums’ Wampanoag Indigenous Program, Coombs dispels pervasive myths, including the idea that Columbus “discovered” America. Kirkus Reviews calls it “a poignant and powerful look at identity, change and resiliency.”

Young Adult Fantasy

To Shape a Dragon’s Breath  by Moniquill Blackgoose

Cover courtesy of the publishers.

Fourth Wing fans will love this young adult fantasy, Lillie says, set in an alternate 1840s southern New England. Sixteen-year-old Anequs bonds with a dragon and leaves her community to attend a magic school run by colonizers. Author Moniquill Blackgoose, a citizen of the Seaconke Wampanoag Tribe, weaves questions of “civilized society” and Indigenous identity into the story. The novel is the first book in a planned trilogy.