Looking for Smoke

Gr 9 Up–Cobell’s debut thriller addresses injustice and homicide within the Montana Blackfeet community. Teenager Rayanne Arnoux has been missing for months, and when her friend Samantha White Tail is murdered at the North American Indian Days festival, fears mount that the two incidents are somehow connected. The story cycles among the four teens (Mara, Loren, Eli, and Brody) who last saw Samantha alive as they come under police scrutiny. Mara, ostracized for returning to reservation life after years spent away, worries that her fights with Samantha and Rayanne will make her a suspect. Loren aggressively searches for answers in the wake of having lost both her sister and her friend. Eli is stigmatized and shunned due to his father’s meth addiction, but he is devoted to protecting and raising his younger sister. And Brody’s loyalty to his older brother, while an admirable family bond, often works against the group’s quest to gather information. The book shines in its character development; there are a lot of initial details to sort through, but each narrator comes into their own after the festival. The thriller elements are more slow-burn than explosive, but Cobell’s focus on missing and murdered Indigenous women raises awareness of the grim statistics present in Native American communities. There is some drug and alcohol use, and most characters are members of the Blackfeet Nation.