“These murder cases expose systemic problems… By evaluating each murder within the framework of Indigenous identity and local hardships, McDiarmid addresses these extremely issues, finding reasons to consider the deeper roots of each work of violence.” —THE BRAND NEW York Times Reserve Review

In the vein of the bestsellers I’ll End up being Gone in the Dark and The Line Becomes a River, a penetrating, deeply shifting account from the lacking and murdered indigenous women and girls of Highway 16, and a searing about Highway of Tears indictment of the culture that failed them.

For decades, Indigenous women and girls have eliminated missing or been found murdered along an isolated stretch of highway in northwestern English Columbia. The corridor is known as the Highway of Tears, and they have come to symbolize a national crisis.

Journalist Jessica McDiarmid meticulously investigates the devastating effect these tragedies have had on the families of the victims and their areas, and how systemic racism and indifference have created a environment where Indigenous women and young ladies are overpoliced yet underprotected. McDiarmid interviews those closest towards the victims—mothers and fathers, siblings and friends—and an intimate firsthand accounts of their reduction and unflagging fight for justice. Evaluating the historically fraught sociable and social tensions between settlers and Indigenous individuals in the region, McDiarmid links these situations to others across Canada—today estimated to amount up to four thousand—contextualizing them within a broader study of the undervaluing of Indigenous lives in the united states.

Highway of Tears is a piercing exploration of our ongoing failing to supply justice for the victims and a testament with their families’ and neighborhoods’ unwavering determination to find it.