Medicine Wheels by William L. Morris Award winner Byron Graves (Rez Ball) is a heartening if painful YA novel about an Ojibwe Lakota teen who finds friendship, skateboarding, and a deep, growing pride in his community and heritage as he weathers rough circumstances.
Fifteen-year-old Bryce has spent two years being bullied and feeling isolated while living on the Green Lake Reservation with his mom "and her jackass boyfriend, Doug." When his mom, who struggles with substance abuse, moves them back to his home rez, Wolf Creek, he reconnects with Robbie and Mikayla, two friends who are skateboarding phenoms. Bryce starts skating, too, after his mom is jailed for breaking probation and he moves in with his grandparents--they still have his late father's custom-made skateboard. As Bryce slowly learns to skaté ("play" in Lakota), he gets involved with an activist group fighting against the building of a pipeline near the rez. Bryce builds a stronger connection with the land and his community amid continued challenges: his grandfather is sick; a group of white boys repeatedly mock Bryce and Robbie at the skate park; and he is consumed with emotions of helplessness and insecurity.
Like Bryce, Graves is Ojibwe and Lakota. Their storytelling incorporates a dynamic, moody mix of angst and hope, grappling frankly with the multifront trials and joys of an Indigenous youth. Fans of Benjamin Alire Sáenz and Francisco X. Stork will be drawn to the complicated world Graves develops around this "rez kid." Any teen--those, like Bryce, feeling powerless or not--should feel seen. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor