At Morges’ Livre sur les quais, Caryl Férey Builds a Lakota Thriller

Caryl Férey’s latest thriller is called “Lakota,” a short title that can mean almost everything or nothing depending on a reader’s familiarity with Indigenous American history and, more specifically, the Sioux. The novel takes Férey to South Dakota and its famous Black Hills, after previous books set in places including South Africa, Colombia, Siberia, Namibia and the Faroe Islands.

The story begins in Minneapolis, where the Mississippi moves slowly beneath the bridges, carrying what the novel describes as “sluggish mud toward the docks.” There, readers meet Winona, a 38-year-old street educator, and her younger brother Duane, who loves horses, rodeos and strong drink.

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sluggish mud toward the docks

Their father, Jake Crow Dog, has been found dead in the Mississippi. Known to his children as “the General,” he is a former soldier who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as a notorious alcoholic. The description of him as a “concentration of Indian defeats” places personal trauma alongside the wider history explored by the novel.

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the General

The police conclude that his death was an accident, but the setting and the family’s history establish the tension at the centre of the thriller. Férey’s approach combines investigation with a portrait of a Lakota community that is widely known by name yet remains unfamiliar in much of its contemporary reality.

The book is being presented at Livre sur les quais in Morges. The review characterizes Férey’s writing as meticulous, precise and consistently surprising, arguing that the richness of his subject does not come at the expense of an effective suspense plot.

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concentration of Indian defeats