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Another Name for Red
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Published on Oct 13, 2026 | 9 Hours 34 Minutes
The debut novel by one of the bestselling Never Whistle at Night’s most memorable contributors, in which, after a young Anishinaabe woman vanishes, her sister tries to pick up the pieces of her broken family, even as her investigations put her at risk of suffering a similar fate.
Middle Sister is haunted by everyone in her community who has disappeared—as well as those who remain. Her ex-best friend and ex-boyfriend are walking relics of the girl she used to be, while her family—her activist mother, checked-out father, and attention-starved younger siblings—are reminders of the elder sister she can never live up to. Then there’s John Smith, the infamous white man with red cowboy boots living on stolen reservation land, whose obsessive attentions are as repellant as they are compelling. But most of all, there are the thousands of unacknowledged missing and murdered Indigenous women, including Older Sister, whose year-long absence from the reservation has torn her remaining family apart.
With local authorities proving useless, Middle Sister decides to start an investigation of her own, beginning with the mysterious “Eric”—a white man from a neighboring town who Older Sister claimed to love, and who she swore loved her. Attempting to hunt down the correct white Eric in the haystack of Minnesota forces Middle Sister to seek help from the community from which she’s grown alienated, starting with her coworker, Casanova; a stray rez dog; and Nookomis, her grandmother who’s foreseen her own death. Yet John still lurks in the growing wintry shadows, offering a sort of surrender that Middle Sister can’t help being drawn to. In the end, she must choose: either let the guilt consume her or forgive herself and fight.
Middle Sister is haunted by everyone in her community who has disappeared—as well as those who remain. Her ex-best friend and ex-boyfriend are walking relics of the girl she used to be, while her family—her activist mother, checked-out father, and attention-starved younger siblings—are reminders of the elder sister she can never live up to. Then there’s John Smith, the infamous white man with red cowboy boots living on stolen reservation land, whose obsessive attentions are as repellant as they are compelling. But most of all, there are the thousands of unacknowledged missing and murdered Indigenous women, including Older Sister, whose year-long absence from the reservation has torn her remaining family apart.
With local authorities proving useless, Middle Sister decides to start an investigation of her own, beginning with the mysterious “Eric”—a white man from a neighboring town who Older Sister claimed to love, and who she swore loved her. Attempting to hunt down the correct white Eric in the haystack of Minnesota forces Middle Sister to seek help from the community from which she’s grown alienated, starting with her coworker, Casanova; a stray rez dog; and Nookomis, her grandmother who’s foreseen her own death. Yet John still lurks in the growing wintry shadows, offering a sort of surrender that Middle Sister can’t help being drawn to. In the end, she must choose: either let the guilt consume her or forgive herself and fight.
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Author
Amber Blaeser-Wardzala
Amber Blaeser-Wardzala is an Anishinaabe writer, beadwork artist, and jingle dress dancer. She is a first-degree descendant of White Earth Nation in Minnesota and grew up in southeastern Wisconsin. She received her MFA from Arizona State University and was the 2024-25 George Bennett Fellow at Phillips Exeter Academy. Her writing has appeared in Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, The Iowa Review, Joyland, Passages North, CRAFT, and others. She has received support from Storyknife Writers Retreat, Vermont Studio Center, the Hambidge Center, Ragdale Foundation, Write On Door County, the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands, the Virginia G. Piper Center, and the Women’s National Book Association. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Fiction at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio where she lives with her overactive dog, Fern.
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