Historical Fiction by Black or Indigenous Authors

Participating in Books & Bites Bingo? Here are some suggestions for the prompt, historical fiction by a Black or Indigenous author.

Updated August 19, 2024
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Even as we breathe : a novel
Clapsaddle, Annette Saunooke
Paper Book
Nineteen-year-old Cowney Sequoyah yearns to escape his hometown of Cherokee, North Carolina, in the heart of the Smoky Mountains. When a summer job at Asheville's luxurious Grove Park Inn and Resort brings him one step closer to escaping the hills that both cradle and suffocate him, he sees it as...
The lost journals of Sacajewea : a novel
Earling, Debra Magpie
Paper Book
Winner of the Montana Book Award From the award-winning author of Perma Red comes a devastatingly beautiful novel that challenges prevailing historical narratives of Sacajewea. "In my seventh winter,...
The night watchman : a novel
Erdrich, Louise
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WASHINGTON POST, NPR, CBS SUNDAY MORNING, KIRKUS, CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY, AND GOOD HOUSEKEEPING BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich's...
James : a novel
Everett, Percival
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER * A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and darkly humorous, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST * ONE OF...
Life and other love songs
Gray, Anissa
Paper Book
"Musical in structure--the octaves rise when the music calls for it; truths are revealed by the invisible beats of this gorgeous, rich story" -Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful (Oprah's Book Club Pick) "Riveting, rhythmic, transcendent...
The house of Eve : a novel
Johnson, Sadeqa
Paper Book
"Amazing...I was completely surprised by the ending of this beautifully told and written book." --Reese Witherspoon "A triumph of historical fiction" (The Washington Post), an instant New York Times bestseller, and a Reese's Book Club pick, set in 1950s...
Lone women : a novel
LaValle, Victor
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * Blue skies, empty land--and enough wide-open space to hide a horrifying secret. A woman with a past, a mysterious trunk, a town on the edge of nowhere, and an "absorbing, powerful" (BuzzFeed) new vision of the American West, from the award-winning author of...
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
McBride, James
Paper Book
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the...
Wandering stars
Orange, Tommy
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The Pulitzer Prize-finalist and author of the breakout bestseller There There ("Pure soaring beauty."The New York Times Book Review) delivers a masterful follow-up to his already classic first novel. Extending his constellation of narratives into...
Ella : a novel
Richards, Diane
Paper Book
In the vein of The Paris Wife and The Personal Librarian comes this debut novel, a magnificent work of "biographical fiction" that reimagines the turbulent and triumphant early years of Ella Fitzgerald, arguably the greatest singer of the twentieth century. When fifteen-year...
Women of the post
Sanders, Joshunda
Paper Book
  "What a beautifully imagined and important narrative. Sanders' clear-eyed and powerful writing made this a hard one to stop reading!" --Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award-Winning Author "This is a novel to cherish and share. And this is a...
When Two Feathers fell from the sky
Verble, Margaret
Paper Book
Louise Erdrich meets Karen Russell in this deliciously strange and daringly original novel from Pulitzer Prize finalist Margaret Verble: set in 1926 Nashville, it follows a death-defying young Cherokee horse-diver who, with her companions from the Glendale Park Zoo, must get to the bottom of a...
Pemmican wars
Vermette, Katherena
Paper Book
Echo Desjardins, a 13-year-old Métis girl adjusting to a new home and school, is struggling with loneliness while separated from her mother. Then an ordinary day in Mr. Bee's history class turns extraordinary, and Echo's life will never be the same. During Mr. Bee's lecture, Echo finds herself...
Let us descend : a novel
Ward, Jesmyn
Paper Book
OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK * Instant New York Times Bestseller * Named one of the best books of 2023 by The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, The Boston Globe, Time, The New Yorker, and more. "Nothing short of epic,...
Ours
Williams, Phillip B.
Paper Book
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, People, Los Angeles Times, NPR, and more "An inventive ode to self-determination and also a surrealistic vision of Black life as forged within the crucible of American history . . . [written in] lush, ornamental...

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