You Look Something

College is supposed to be the best years of your life, a time when you "find your tribe." But what does that mean for a first-generation, urban, indigenous young woman who stumbled into her freshman year to escape an abusive relationship? Armed with nothing more than piles of students loans, this is one indigenous girl's journey through the most challenging set of obstacles yet ... and finding herself in the process.

YOU LOOK SOMETHING is somewhat of a prequel to the author's award-winning debut novel THE WRONG KIND OF INDIAN (2017). When Julia breaks into college life as an indigenous, first-generation, low-income freshman dubbed "independent" by the FAFSA office due to being homeless as a teen and abandonment by both parents, she enters a world that was never meant to belong to her. Aware of the delicacy of the situation, and the guarantee of a complete fallout if she fails, she grabs onto a façade and goes all-in from joining a sorority to indulging in all of the vices tempting college students at the turn of the century.

"You Look Something" is what Julia has heard her entire life. Aware of her ability to "pass" as white, and as the only Native American child in her small, homogenously white southern Oregon hometown, she had always dreamt of getting out and making it to Portland. She just never thought it would happen by getting kicked out of her house when her parents divorced. Getting mixed up in an abusive relationship didn't help, but it did help her get to Portland.

Escaping a lifetime of dangerous relationships is just the start. YOU LOOK SOMETHING is a coming of age story about what it means to risk it all for the unknown, and the tenacity required to slowly start understanding and being yourself.