First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if, instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

The Rules:

• Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page.
• Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first.
• Finally… reveal the book!

First Lines:

“Everything turned to shit when Cousin got took. It all happened like this: I rode Pony bareback, Cousin marched beside me. We was walking the trail from the burn scar in the forest back to the homestead after playing buffalo hunters. Me and him was making chit-chat about how good of buffalo hunters we would’ve made. Then I seen a coyote startle in the bush.”

Reading these first few lines made this book completely jump to the top of my TBR.

Do you recognize the lines?

Here’s a hint:

This is an Indigenous historical fiction debut.

Still not sure? Here’s another hint:

It is by Blair Palmer Yoxall.

The First Lines Friday book is:

Treat Them as Buffalo by Blair Palmer Yoxall.

About the Book:

• Title: Treat Them as Buffalo
• Author: Blair Palmer Yoxall
• Page Length: 288 pages
• Publication Date: May 5, 2026
• Publisher: Algonquin Books

Synopsis:

An electrifying anti-Western from an exciting new Indigenous writer. As teenage boys begin to disappear from a great plains Métis community, a young man attempts to uncover the evil force lurking out of sight.

In 1885, Nikosis “Niko” Eriksen spends his days playing buffalo hunter, even though it’s been many years since a member of his tribe has actually seen one of the once-ubiquitous animals. But when beloved Cousin goes missing, things start to fall apart. With law enforcement failing—indeed refusing—to investigate the disappearance, the community members take matters into their own hands, rallying around the leadership of a sawn-off shotgun-slinging rancher named Kate McCannon.

The resultant women-led coalition of freedom fighters strikes back against the Mounted Police as they investigate the boys’ disappearance and take their futures into their own hands. But violence continues to haunt Niko, and boys continue to disappear. As he leaves his boyhood behind and draws closer to finding Cousin, Niko’s investigation points to a harrowing revelation about his own heritage, which heels closer to violence that any boy would wish to know.

Written with the pace and punch of Outlawed and the inventiveness of The Only Good Indians, Treat Them as Buffalo delivers a gripping portrait of a young man coming of age before his time. 

Links: Goodreads     

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