Key Selling Points: Book one in The Long Shadows series, a new adventure fantasy YA series told from an Indigenous perspective. For fans of YA fantasy authors Cherie Dimaline (The Marrow Thieves), Richard Van Camp (Beast), and who grew up on David A. Robertson's Misewa Saga and Gary Robinson's books. In the Long Shadows was the winner of the 2025 Second Story Press Indigenous Writing Contest, judged by bestselling author Richard Van Camp, Sandra Samatte of Indigenous wholesaler GoodMinds.com, and Jordan Ryder, Managing Editor at Second Story Press. Sandra Samatte of GoodMinds.com praised In the Long Shadows: "This fantasy fiction, for a young adult audience, is beautifully descriptive, immersive, animated, and relational. This is a powerful story of hope and resilience." This is author Bear Meawasige's debut book. Bear is of mixed Ojibwe and Scottish ancestry and is a member of Serpent River First Nation in Ontario. Features an atmospheric, immersive setting full of compelling, adventurous characters. There's a mystery element to this fantasy novel, with the eeriness of the deserted castles and cities of the stonefolk, a strange colonialist people from somewhere beyond the sea who once waged war and tried to subjugate the Indigenous clans. Suddenly, seemingly overnight, they disappeared. Although the clans forbid anyone from entering the ruins of the stonefolk, Leaf and others are drawn to the ruins, seeking answers to their questions. The book is a fantasy-filtered examination of settler colonialism, seen through the eyes of the young people living in the shadow of this history. The statues that scar the land are seen as the gravestone of a deeply self-destructive people. Traditionally heroic figures like knights and kings are looked upon as figures of terror. Not symbols of glory, but symbols of terrible loss, kidnapped children, and an attempt at cultural genocide.