review: Legendary Frybread Drive-In: Intertribal Stories

Review: Legendary Frybread Drive In

Legendary Frybread Drive-In: Intertribal Stories
Edited by Cynthia Leitich Smith; Heartdrum/HarperCollins
August, 2025
pre-order

A few months ago, I had the pleasure of doing a cover reveal for Legendary Frybread Drive-In: Intertribal Stories and was so enamored by the cover and list of contributors, that I requested a review copy on Edelweiss and began reading. I’ve not always been a short story fan, but I’ve come to enjoy the way they let you stop and start again without really missing anything. So, I stopped and started, and took my time reading. What I found was a delightful reading experience.

There’s this place, Sandy June’s Legendary Fry Bread Drive In, that people have been to or heard of but don’t exactly know how to get to. It’s there, over the hill, or down that road, but which road, or hill? Cynthia Leitich Smith gathered 18 storytellers including Brian Young, Andrea L. Rogers, Darcie Little Badger and Angeline Boulley to write about this elusive place that provides the required wisdom, love, and support to its visitors. This is a story of that place and it’s told through the lives of the young people. Urban Native young adults from numerous intersecting identities venture to this communal space to meet a crush, read a poem, mourn, or reconnect with family. The stories are about their lived experiences, not white oppression. With place being central to these stories, readers gain a perspective of what it means that this land we’re on is Native land. The Drive In is where these young people go to restore their sense of pride, connection, history, family, and to find good food.

I really appreciated the evenness of stories. The authors managed to stay true to the parameters created for the Drive In – to bring in unique individuals who relate a different characteristic of the establishment – and to tell a really good story. I didn’t want to skip over any of them as is often the case in short stories collections. I appreciated that these are today’s urban teens and the lens through which we see them is Native American, yet written in a way that invites me, a old Black woman, in. through its integrity; it didn’t cater to my lack of knowledge by feeding stereotypes.

I would recommend this to senior high and public libraries.

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