By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land

How it reads

By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land is narrative nonfiction (indigenous history and investigative nonfiction, specifically), and its dominant mood is hopeful. Whatever it puts its people through, it believes things can get better. The pace is moderate — neither a page-turner nor a slow burn — so it holds up whether you read it in long sittings or short ones.

It's set in several locations, in the historical past, told through letters, documents or mixed forms. Its central concerns are justice, class and society and power and politics. In weight it's heavy and literary — denser, more serious, and more demanding of you.

It stands alone, so there's nothing else you need to read first or after. The ending is bittersweet: it resolves, but at a price. At 352 pages it's an ordinary novel's length. It's well known, the kind of book most keen readers have heard of.