Taylor, Drew Hayden. The Night Wanderer. Annick Press, 2007.
Night Wanderer is an interesting teen novel, written by Drew Hayden Taylor, an Ojibwa Native American. The story takes place on an Indian Reservation in Canada, and surrounds the life of a 16-year-old girl, her father, and their strange, new tenant that lives in the basement. The front of the book labels itself as a "Native Gothic Novel," and that, I suppose, you could say it is, as that strange new tenant happens to be a vampire, who once was a human Native American hundreds of years ago. It has interesting implications for a Native novel, as the vampire becomes infected after he's lured away by White settlers to go to Europe--suggesting a metaphor for Whites sucking the life out of the Native peoples of the New World. The (Native) girl of then novel also embarks on her first real dating relationship, and does so with a White guy from her school, who turns out to want to use her for her Native privileges, like her "status" discount card, herbal remedies, etc. It also has interesting connections to her mother, whom a couple years before the novel ran off with a White guy to start a new life off the reservation.
It's a unique book of its kind, and holds value in that uniqueness, though I'm not sure I would teach it. The girl is a little exaggeratedly stereotyped into being a sassy, immature teenager, but I guess it works with the young adult genre. It also addresses some good teen issues--bad boyfriends, dealing with family issues, and even suicide, but being a vampire novel, it gets a little weird sometimes. I would (will) most definitely have it on my shelf.
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