Bad Cree

August 1, 2022

Young Cree woman Mackenzie increasingly dreams about a long-ago weekend at her family's lakefront campsite that transpired before her sister Sabrina's death. The dreams are full of fierce crows, and now crows are following her in real life, so she heads home to rural Alberta to get help from her family. A debut for Nehiyaw author Johns, a member of Sucker Creek First Nation in Treaty 8 territory in Northern Alberta.

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 7, 2022
Johns combines domestic realism and horror in her haunting debut, the story of a young Cree woman who’s distraught over the death of her sister. Mackenzie has fled from her home in northern Alberta to Vancouver, but the chilling dreams she’d hoped to escape follow her. Feeling increasingly threatened, she returns home, where her sister Sabrina died of a brain aneurysm shortly after their beloved grandmother died. There, she is reunited with Sabrina’s twin, Tracey, and their cousin Kassidy, as well as her mother and her aunties, and gradually discovers that they all have dreams that affect their waking lives in some way. As well, her recurring dream of drowning prompts Mackenzie to recall a summer day when Sabrina emerged from the woods looking glassy-eyed and somehow damaged, but she never learned what happened. Now, with Mackenzie’s dreams intensifying, the cousins conclude she must have encountered a “wheetigo,” a dangerous spirit, and they set out to destroy it before it comes for them. The novel serves as a window into a world where dreams intersect with waking reality, and where that unseen dimension is as much a part of the life of a tight-knit family and community as bingo, jokes, and video games. It works equally well as spine-tingling thriller and a touching meditation on grief.

November 15, 2022
Johns deploys and transforms horror motifs in this haunting story of Indigenous survivance. "Before I look down, I know it's there. The crow's head I was clutching in my dream is now in bed with me." When her sister died, Mackenzie didn't go home to grieve with her family. But now, two years later, Sabrina is stalking Mackenzie in her dreams, dragging her back to a single night in their shared past. And when the boundary between this world and the dream world dissolves, Mackenzie knows that going back to rural Alberta--to her parents, her aunties, her cousins--is her only choice. Johns uses classic horror tropes to explore experiences that are specific to Indigenous people. For example, Mackenzie's attempt to avoid dealing with her sister's death results in psychic eruptions she can't control, but these disturbances aren't just personal--they resonate within her family, are reflections of her community, and are essentially connected to the land she grew up on. Similarly, while it would be easy to say that there are supernatural elements at work in this novel, that would reveal a fundamental misunderstanding about the malevolent forces Mackenzie and her family are fighting. The land emerges as a character here, and the hungry spirits plaguing Mackenzie are products of the same greed that sapped her community of its resources and left them with nothing when there was no more to take. The ghosts here are entirely natural, native to the setting of this novel and the worldview of its characters. A single death sets this story in motion, but Johns uses one lost life to explore generational trauma and the ways in which families and communities can break harmful cycles and heal themselves. At the same time, she delivers a narrative that is truly chilling and suspenseful. A powerful exploration of generational trauma and an artful, affecting debut.

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Starred review from November 1, 2022
A young Cree woman finds herself unable to outrun her sister's tragic death and the nightmares that follow in this haunting debut. In Vancouver, Mackenzie maintains a distance from her Plains family and the loss of her grandmother and her sister Sabrina. However, terrifying dreams of bloody crows and a foreboding feeling propel her to reach back out to family. If anyone can help her decipher the disturbing visions, it's her mother, aunties, cousin, and surviving sister. Nightly terrors ratchet up the suspense, balanced by the determination of Mackenzie's family to seek out answers in their community. A wheetigo (windigo) has latched on to her family's tragic loss and is feeding on Mackenzie's sorrow, but what could have caused it? Johns laces cryptid terror into the sense of loss that her community feels, speculating that the oil industry has not only lured wrongdoers to their lands but also summoned threatening supernatural forces. Visceral details will have readers hanging on the edge of every chapter, waiting to see when the wheetigo will strike next. Perfect for fans of Ramona Emerson's Shutter and Stephen Graham Jones' The Only Good Indians--Johns is a writer to watch.

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November 1, 2022

DEBUT Indigenous author Johns's debut features a young Cree woman who can manifest dream objects in the real world. As Mackenzie's dreams begin to bleed into reality, she continues to be affected by her sister's untimely death at her family's lakefront campsite. Plagued by her dreams and questions about what really happened at the lake that night, Mackenzie returns to her family in her rural Alberta hometown, where they welcome her back, but her dreams only get more dangerous. While this fits in a horror collection, it is also a story about grief and family and the lingering effects of the infringement of industrialism on native lands. At its heart are the strong familial bonds between its predominantly Cree cast of characters as the story is put in the context of the Cree experience, with aspects of their history, culture, and lore present throughout. VERDICT Despite some of the genuinely eerie imagery and horror elements, when the book ends, what readers will remember most are the moments these characters shared together, playing cards and talking late into the night.--Ammi Bui

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.