Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Michelle Good's Five Little Indians. Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.
Five Little Indians: Introduction
Five Little Indians: Plot Summary
Five Little Indians: Detailed Summary & Analysis
Five Little Indians: Themes
Five Little Indians: Quotes
Five Little Indians: Characters
Five Little Indians: Symbols
Five Little Indians: Theme Wheel
Brief Biography of Michelle Good
Historical Context of Five Little Indians
Other Books Related to Five Little Indians
- Full Title: Five Little Indians
- When Written: 2011–2020
- Where Written: British Columbia, Canada
- When Published: 2020
- Literary Period: Contemporary
- Genre: Novel, Historical Fiction
- Setting: Canada in the 1970s to the early 2000s
- Climax: Kenny dies Howie decides to testify in the lawsuit.
- Antagonist: Sister Mary, Brother, Father Levesque, white Canadian society
- Point of View: First Person and Third Person
Extra Credit for Five Little Indians
Not Who She Said She Was. When Clara secures fake IDs, Lucy’s is for “Bunny St. Marie,” in reference to American singer-songwriter and activist Buffy St. Marie, who became infamous in 2023 when her longstanding claims of Indigenous heritage were thoroughly debunked. The fakeness of the ID hints at St. Marie’s harmful deception. But Clara’s love for the singer (whose music she listens to elsewhere in the book) also testifies to the key role St. Marie played for many Indigenous activists—including Michelle Good—in the 1960s and 1970s, something Good has written about publicly elsewhere.
Ahead of His Time. Clara introduces Kendra to Mariah as “the First Indian Doctor in Canada,” but that title is thought to belong to Peter Edmund Jones (Kahkewaquonaby), who graduated from the Toronto School of Medicine in 1866.