The Missing Morningstar
And Other Stories
- 2023 INDIES Winner
- Gold, Short Stories (Adult Fiction)
The artful stories of Stacie Shannon Denetsosie’s unflinching collection The Missing Morningstar are set in the Navajo Nation, where people who struggle to overcome adversity often derive comfort from their community’s traditions.
Focusing on the lives of young people—most often women—living on the “rez,” these stories include instances of domestic violence, abduction, and murder, though of perhaps greater weight are the ways in which people’s traditions and relationships foster connections to what’s bigger, stronger, and indestructible. Their prose is striking and lyrical, including descriptions of a “salmon-bellied sky,” a girl wearing “so much turquoise jewelry she sounded like a walking penny jar,” and a grandfather whose “hands were rough as splinters.”
In “The Casket in the Backseat,” a boy communes with his grandfather’s spirit and gains knowledge that helps him to comfort his mother. In “Wool Dolls,” a girl misses out on her woman-becoming ceremony and engages in casual sex, thinking that the latter is a way to prove that she has become a woman.
In “Snow Bath,” a woman follows the dictates of her dead mother’s voice coming from an Alexa speaker and drives to the mountains. She sheds her clothes and submerges in a snowbank in a Navajo ritual to teach endurance. And in “Reservation State of Mind,” a girl who’s at a gas station to buy snacks grieves for her murdered brother, though she also recalls a time, while she was sitting in her brother’s truck, when he talked about his girlfriend: “‘I choked her. Sher, I hit her, and I didn’t stop.’”
Altogether, the poignant stories of The Missing Morningstar represent a world of people searching for love, fulfillment, and belonging.
Reviewed by
Karen Mulvahill
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
