White Girl — Grace Jelsnik

When her lifelong best friend, Maggie, entrusts a USB drive into Tashina's care, she tells the rookie FBI agent to give it to an unknown David if anything happens to her. He'll find her, Maggie assures her. Hours later, Maggie is dead, and Tashina's family and friends are under surveillance. She has nowhere to run but to the home of her mother's people, the Lakota Sioux on Pine Ridge Reservation. In her journey from California to South Dakota and back again, the half-Lakota Tashina learns not only what is on the USB drive but also what it means to be half-Indian and half-white in a world where both sides still nurse old grievances. A mission to honor a friend's request becomes a period of discovery for the woman disparagingly called “white-girl.”