Elatsoe

by Darcie Little Badger, Rovina Cai (Illustrator)

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Part fantasy, part mystery, and entirely engrossing, Elatsoe is a unique story about a 17-year-old girl in an alternate version of America who possesses the ability to raise animal spirits from the dead. When her cousin dies in a mysterious accident, Ellie sets out to uncover the truth. Firmly rooted in Lipan Apache lore, Elatsoe is a true homage to the art and power of storytelling.

Locus Award Winner—Best First Novel

A National Indie Bestseller

Nebula Award Finalist

Lodestar Award Finalist

Ignyte Award Finalist

TIME's Best 100 Fantasy Books of All Time

NPR Best of the Year

Booklist's Top 10 First Novels for Youth

A BookPage Best of the Year

Chicago Public Library "Best of the Best"

PNBA Bestseller

Publishers Weekly Best of the Year

Buzzfeed's Best YA SFF of the Year

Shelf-Awareness Best of the Year

AICL Best YA of the Year

NECBA Windows & Mirrors Selection

NEIBA Award Finalist

Tor Best of the Year

Kirkus Best YA of the Year

Publishers Weekly Flying Start

American Indian Youth Literature Award Finalist

"Groundbreaking."—TIME

"Deeply enjoyable from start to finish."—NPR

"Utterly magical."—SyFyWire

"Atmospheric and lyrical...a gorgeous work of art."—BuzzFeed

"One of the best YA debuts of 2020. Read it."—Marieke Nijkamp

★ "A fresh voice and perspective."—Booklist, starred review

★ "A unique and powerful Native American voice."—BookPage, starred review

★ "A brilliant, engaging debut."—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

★ "A fast-paced murder mystery."—Publishers Weekly, starred review

★ "A Lipan Apache Sookie Stackhouse for the teen set."—Shelf-Awareness, starred review

A Texas teen comes face-to-face with a cousin's ghost and vows to unmask the murderer.

Elatsoe—Ellie for short—lives in an alternate contemporary America shaped by the ancestral magics and knowledge of its Indigenous and immigrant groups. She can raise the spirits of dead animals—most importantly, her ghost dog Kirby. When her beloved cousin dies, all signs point to a car crash, but his ghost tells her otherwise: He was murdered.

Who killed him and how did he die? With the help of her family, her best friend Jay, and the memory great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother, Elatsoe, must track down the killer and unravel the mystery of this creepy town and it's dark past. But will the nefarious townsfolk and a mysterious Doctor stop her before she gets started?

A breathtaking debut novel featuring an asexual, Apache teen protagonist, Elatsoe combines mystery, horror, noir, ancestral knowledge, haunting illustrations, fantasy elements, and is one of the most-talked about debuts of the year.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781646140053
Publisher:	Levine Querido
Publication date:	08/25/2020
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	20,718
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 5.80(h) x 1.30(d)
Age Range:	12 - 18 Years

About the Author

Darcie Little Badger is an Earth scientist, writer, and fan of the weird, beautiful, and haunting. She is an enrolled member of the Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas. Her Locus Award-winning debut novel, Elatsoe, was a National Indie Bestseller, named to over a dozen best-of-year lists, and called one of the Best 100 Fantasy Novels of All Time by TIME. Her second novel, A Snake Falls to Earth was longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature and received a Newbery Award Honor.

Rovina Cai is a freelance illustrator based in Melbourne, Australia. She works out of an old convent building that is possibly haunted. Her work has been recognized by the Society of Illustrators and the Children's Book Council of Australia. Recently she has illustrated books by Patrick Ness and Margo Lanagan. Instagram @rovinacai

Editorial Reviews

★ 06/22/2020

Indigenous myths, modern-day technology, and the supernatural successfully blend to build a fast-paced murder mystery in Little Badger’s intriguing solo debut. After 17-year-old, asexual Ellie’s older cousin Trevor is fatally injured in an apparent car accident, he comes to her in a dream, identifying his killer and begging her to protect his family. Lipan Apache Ellie, named for her “heroic ancestor”—her maternal sixth-great-grandmother, Elatsoe, now known as “Six-Great”—has inherited from her the gift of waking and training ghosts, and sets out to reveal the accident as a crime and unmask the killer. Accom-panied by her faithful sidekick, the ghost of her dead dog Kirby, her loyal friend, “white Celtic-and-Nordic-American” cheerleader Jay, and actively supported by her understanding parents, Ellie battles with ghosts, vampires, and exorcists in a series of suspenseful confrontations—including a descent into an underworld of trilobite fossils—that increase in intensity and eventually solidify her place in her strong maternal lineage of Native protectors. Cai’s grayscale spot illustrations imbue the book with shadowy breath and movement, bringing a lyrical undertone to the energetic plot and multifaceted, refreshing voice. Ages 12–up. Author’s agent: Michael Curry, Donald Maass Literary. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"[A] refreshing voice. Indigenous myths, modern-day technology, and the supernatural successfully blend to build a fast-paced murder mystery."-Publishers Weekly, starred review

"A brilliant, engaging debut. It seamlessly blends cyberstalking with Vampire Citizen Centers and Lipan Apache stories." - KIRKUS REVIEWS (starred review)

"Creative and meticulously plotted. a Lipan Apache Sookie Stackhouse for the teen set." - SHELF-AWARENESS starred review

"Groundbreaking." -TIME

"A fresh voice and perspective, weaving in folktales, omens, and urban legends of the protagonist's Lipan Apache culture." - BOOKLIST (starred review)

"A strong heroine, a supernatural mystery and a unique and powerful Native American voice."-BOOKPAGE (starred review)

"This absorbing and haunting speculative fiction debut challenges expectations at every turn."- HORN BOOK (starred review)

"Utterly magical." - SYFYWIRE

"Beautiful. Sinister. Deeply enjoyable from start to finish." - NPR

"The 100 Fantasy Books of All Time" - TIME

From the Publisher

07/01/2020

Gr 5 Up—Elatsoe (Ellie) is a Lipan Apache teen who lives in Texas, where bizarre supernatural occurrences are the norm and people encounter magic, monsters, shape-shifters, and various supernatural events beyond reason. Ellie has inherited the spiritual skills of her people and has raised the ghost of her dog Kirby. A shimmering mass, Kirby is a loyal companion who alerts Ellie to danger and has the ability to move through walls. Ellie uses her supernatural abilities and keen observation skills to investigate the gruesome, suspicious death of her cousin Trevor. The story opens deceptively slow with abundant character introduction, but the turning point arrives when Ellie dreams about Trevor and he reveals the murderer's identity. Ellie and her friend Jay visit a library to research the paranormal history of the Texas town where her cousin was killed. They discover that the blood of vulnerable people is a key to one doctor's cures. In a time-bending web of travel between past, present, and the underworld, Ellie confronts the killer. The dramatic ending will engage readers, and is a worthy payoff for the somewhat slow introductory pace. VERDICT Ellie's family's cultural beliefs and status as Indigenous people are presented well in the context of this supernatural fantasy. Recommended for fans of the genre.—Naomi Caldwell, Alabama State Univ., Montgomery

School Library Journal

★ 2020-05-17
A teenager with supernatural gifts must solve her cousin’s murder before it’s too late.

Aside from the fact that she owns a ghost dog named Kirby, Ellie is like any other comic book–loving, ice cream–eating Lipan Apache teenager. Her non-Native friends include her childhood buddy Jay, who is white, and her cousin Trevor’s Latinx wife, Lenore. Yet Ellie does have traits that set her apart: She has inherited the talents of Six-Great-Grandmother, her powerful Lipan Apache forebear, and plans to skip college to work as a paranormal investigator. When Trevor dies in what appears to be a car accident, his ghost appears to her briefly, begging that she protect his wife and child. Ellie must call upon her strong lineage to rid her ancestral land of an ancient curse. Even as she discovers some of her own tribal relatives have been complicit in historic wrongdoing, she must save her family, animals, and community from destructive forces and restore balance to the world. A fast-paced whodunit set in a contemporary world like our own, this is a creative fusion of Indigenous cultural influences and supernatural fantasy. A brilliant, engaging debut written by a talented author, it seamlessly blends cyberstalking with Vampire Citizen Centers and Lipan Apache stories. This groundbreaking introduction to the fantasy genre remains relevant to Native histories even as it imaginatively looks to the future.

Educates about settler colonialism while also entertaining with paranormal twists. (Speculative fiction. 13-18)

Kirkus Reviews