In his first YA novel, award-winning author Brian Lee Young (Diné) bridges the generational divide between a Navajo teen at an elite prep school and his great-grandmother’s experience at a federal boarding school for Indigenous students. The book is an eye-opening call for community healing and a profound coming-of-age story.

Even if it hurts to leave behind his friends and family in Navajo, New Mexico—especially his great-grandmother, Mildred—Derrick knows his scholarship to an elite East Coast boarding school is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Sagefield Academy is totally different from life on the rez: His new classmates vacation in Europe and take study drugs. Derrick wants to stick to caffeine, but handling sports, school, and a twenty-page term paper, all while dodging comments about his hair and heritage, feels straight-up impossible.

Back home, Másání Mildred’s health is fading quickly. On the phone, she begs Derrick to leave Sagefield. When he realizes her fear comes from her time in federal Native boarding schools, he knows he’s finally found the term paper theme he believes carrying her voice into the future.

Derrick will need to shatter a steadfast generational silence to untangle his great-grandmother’s memories—though her story might change him, and his family, forever.

Amazon | Goodreads

I am always happy to see books with representation of other cultures or books that tackle subject that in a lot of ways today’s society is trying to ignore or bury. So much of history is being intentionally buried or erased, so stories like this need to be told – especially in the young adult and middle grade spaces.

We follow Derrick, who has had to relocate because he got the opportunity to attend an East Coast boarding school – a far cry from Navajo, New Mexico. Add onto that the pressure of keeping up in school, worries regarding his family members and the shadows of the past regarding Native boarding schools.

I do feel like this read a little young for the way it was marketed and there were some areas where the story could have gone more in depth to give Derrick and his story more dimension. It felt like it was almost there in some areas.

Happy reading!

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