Disappointing ( )

Shiprock Baby is the story of Melissa, a young woman whom we meet in the prologue as an infant abandoned at birth in the shadow of the Shiprock mountain. Author R. Bruce Logan picks up Melissa’s life at age 26, when she embarks on what becomes a life-changing internship at a women’s rights agency on the Navajo reservation. Logan skillfully weaves together elements of the missing and murdered indigenous women (MMIW) movement with Melissa’s growing understanding of who she is and the people she came from, blending the work of her internship with her search for her birth parents.

I live on a reservation just west of the parts of the novel that are in northern New Mexico and Arizona, and am familiar with many of the locales Logan used as backdrops to this story. I am also very familiar with a number of things Logan included relative to life on the Navajo reservation and the peculiarities of law enforcement among non-tribal members. It was evident that Logan did his research well in constructing his story, accurately conveying the realities of reservation life and culture. In sum, while fiction this was a well-written story that accurately conveys truths about the matter of MMIW, which is a scourge on many reservations.

It was my pleasure to have received a complimentary copy of Shiprock Baby to read and review. ( )

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
I chose to read this book based on the blurb, and thought it would be an interesting read. However, just a few pages into the book itself, I realized how not interested I was in hearing what a Caucasian male author had to say about the MMIW movement and the struggle of a woman trying to find her birth parents.
Melissa felt like an afterthought to a lot of the story, as we bounced back and forth between characters often. The FBI agents were occasionally more prominent and focused on than the supposed titular character of the book. Parts of this book felt like infomercials about the various Indigenous ways of living and acronyms that a lot of us don't know; this would have been okay, but the shift into Wikipedia-article-speak was jarring and took me out of the story often. Other parts felt like episodes of CSI or NCIS, with the crime being solved just as it would on TV.
I do have to say, though- the story was interesting enough that I finished the book in a day and a half. I think the story would have been the same if Melissa's car had broken down on the rez instead of her getting a job there, as it didn't do much to the story; the restorative justice add-on at the end also felt very forced. I felt like I didn't sign up for that.

All in all, I am neutral on the book. I think that it's one thing to bring awareness and share knowledge of things that are outside of your own life, but it's another to take an authoritative point of view (as authors tend to do) and preach it as the truth. I am an educator in Canada and teach an Indigenous Studies class. Maybe I just wasn't the target audience for this book, but I will not be recommending it for my peers, friends, or students to read.

Shiprock Baby tells two stories: Melissa Cody's search for her birth parents and the abduction and rape of two young women from a Navajo reservation. This novel has a good balance of not-too-graphic thriller, journey of self-discovery, and the realities of reservation poverty and violence.
I wasn’t a fan of the use of clichés throughout, especially when describing Melissa’s feelings, e.g. “felt her heart skip a beat”, "her heart fluttered”, “her heart skipped a bit” and I found some of the minor characters to be more interesting, however it was the author’s intent to highlight the issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, which this novel does. ( )

It’s August 1994 when 3 young children find a gym bag at the base of Shiprock Peak. When they open it they find a newborn baby.

Fast forward to November 2020 when Melissa Cody drives into Window Rock, New Mexico. She is there to do some volunteering for the Indigenous Women’s Network of Arizona and New Mexico. She also happens to be the newborn from the gym bag.

While there she gets involved in the disappearance of 2 Indigenous women. She is also searching for her birth parents.

This book is extremely well written and very timely. I really loved this book and am so glad I had the opportunity to win it. ( )