The Only Good Indians

"The Only Good Indians is one of those books that does so much. It blends horror with social commentary in the absolute best way. It follows four American Indian men after this event in their youth tips everything upside down. They are each tracked down by a supernatural being that seeks to get revenge on them. There’s a character called elk woman who is so filled with rage and not fully human. Again, there’s the element of metaphor that’s really strong, and the femaleness of this vengeful entity is striking. It’s appalling and horrific. I remember wondering how I was going to describe it as I read, because I wanted to tell my husband to read it, and I thought, “I’m not going to do it justice. It’s just insane.” I love books that take us right to the edge of horror, and I loved that I was second-guessing myself – are we meant to believe that this is a real elk woman, a real entity? She’s tracking down all the men, so it’s not just one man’s nightmare… It’s a really brilliant, unusual, original, quirky kind of horror, unsettling and disturbing. It hits you in the face and leaves you thinking, “What on earth did I just read?”. And then you keep thinking about it… So it’s the world of Native Americans, specifically the Blackfeet Nation, and it’s a commentary on the way they’re represented: how they’re treated in society, the discrimination that they face, and the effects of settler colonialism, which affects the lives of tribes across Turtle Island. We look at how it impacts the men, and I do think it’s about trauma — all four of them are affected – it’s about generations, and the effects passed down through their lives. It looks at how that affects them mentally, but also in terms of their life choices and how they are treated by others. For me, what characterizes something as Gothic at all is the pervading sense of something unsettling. It’s about trauma and how it manifests. Trauma is such a small word for something that’s so vast, and can be generational, and affects people in so many ways."