Let's Read and Discuss 'Bad Cree' by Jessica Johns

Join us to discuss 'Bad Cree' by Jessica Johns!

DATE CHANGE: we will be meeting on Saturday, November 21st this month!

In this gripping debut tinged with supernatural horror, a young Cree woman's dreams lead her on a perilous journey of self-discovery that ultimately forces her to confront the toll of a legacy of violence on her family, her community and the land they call home.

When Mackenzie wakes up with a severed crow's head in her hands, she panics. Only moments earlier she had been fending off masses of birds in a snow-covered forest. In bed, when she blinks, the head disappears.

Night after night, Mackenzie's dreams return her to a memory from before her sister Sabrina's untimely death: a weekend at the family's lakefront campsite, long obscured by a fog of guilt. But when the waking world starts closing in, too--a murder of crows stalks her every move around the city, she wakes up from a dream of drowning throwing up water, and gets threatening text messages from someone claiming to be Sabrina--Mackenzie knows this is more than she can handle alone.

Traveling north to her rural hometown in Alberta, she finds her family still steeped in the same grief that she ran away to Vancouver to escape. They welcome her back, but their shaky reunion only seems to intensify her dreams--and make them more dangerous.

What really happened that night at the lake, and what did it have to do with Sabrina's death? Only a bad Cree would put their family at risk, but what if whatever has been calling Mackenzie home was already inside (goodreads.com)?

Jessica Johns is a queer Nehiyaw (Cree) author from Northern Alberta, Canada. She is a member of the Sucker Creek First Nation in Treaty 8 territory. 'Bad Cree', her debut novel, won the MacEwan Book of the Year award, the Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction, the ALA Alex Award, and was selected for the 2024 CBC Canada Reads. In addition to fiction, she has published poetry, criticism, and nonfiction throughout Canada and internationally.

Trigger warnings: death, grief, violence, substance abuse, child loss

Sources & further reading:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/2266437/jessica-johns/
https://jessicasbjohns.com/about/