HOBBIES OVER COFFEE

Having read Ari’s previous novel Saints of The Household, in which poetry, prose and a struggle between two brothers growing up shone. I knew I had to read Together We See. This story follows siblings in grief over the recent death of their father, returning to Costa Rica to begin burial rights only to quickly learn he might have been murdered. 

Title : together We See
Author : Ari Tison
Genre: Young Adult | Mystery |
Indigenous
Pages: 320
Own/Borrowed/ARC:  eARC
Publication Date: June 16, 2026

This edge-of-your-seat Indigenous murder-mystery set in Costa Rica from Pura Belpré and Walter Dean Myers Award-winning author of Saints of the Household is perfect for fans of Firekeeper’s Daughter and Patron Saints of Nothing.

How far would you go to protect your land? To protect your family?

Told in multiple points of view, Together We See follows Ulá Dominguez, a Bribri-American teenager, searching for the truth behind her land-activist father’s mysterious death on their Native territory in Costa Rica. Ulá and her brother, Kabék, uncover secrets and corruption as they face off against illegal loggers, kidnappers, settlers, and the local government in the hunt for clues. Their only allies are a few family friends and relatives still living in Bribri, as well as a young journalist, who may be in danger himself. But as details of their father’s death emerge, long-held trust is broken. And in this sinister web of deception, no one is safe.

Inspired by real-world missing, dead, and attacked Indigenous activists, award-winning author Ari Tison writes her first novel in prose and pushes the envelope yet again by pulling together a propulsive story full of grief, environmental justice, and the fight for retribution.

Ulá has a strained relationship with her father, who lives in Costa Rica and is an activist for the Bribri people and natives of Costa Rica. When he shows up unannounced in Wisconsin during Christmas with her brother, it becomes more strained as she feels like he is continuing to push the way of their people upon her. But as abruptly as he came, he leaves after receiving a string of mysterious messages, only for them to receive a call informing them that he has died. 

Ulá and her brother Kabék spent the time between Christmas and New Years trekking back to Costa Rica to help their aunt bury their father in the traditions that they knew their father would prefer. It’s a trip in which both struggle to reconcile the emotions they have towards their father, each other and what this all means to them all as a family. A grief and struggle that is cut short when their fathers landlord, Priscilla lets them know that she thinks their father met a more nefarious end. Even going as far as contacting an independent reporter as well to help look into what the police are refusing to look into. While Ulá and Kabék begin to go through their fathers things to find what to bury with him as tradition dictates, they come across their fathers manuscript for his autobiography in which he left a note for Ulá. 

A note that leaves them without a doubt that their father was murdered and diving into the work he did and people around them as they try to figure out this murder that the authorities refuse to acknowledge occurred. We follow different narratives, Ulá’s, a journalist Ian, a little boy Mu, his sister Lilo and an omniscient perspective that represents the Bribri ancestors, but for the most we stick with Ulá. Through these perspectives we follow them on their journey through their grief, coming into realization of what a complicated person their father was with his intentions of trying to reconnect with Ulá and the many injustices that face their people and those who try to do good in a place that they call home.  

This is a wonderful story of grieving a parent that you don’t know that well and the injustices that the Bribri people face in their own land. It brings forward the topics of companies, settlers and officials being bribed to take land from Bribri people and even going as far as murder to silence the ones who stand up and fight for things that are rightfully theirs.  While the narrative choice for this story might have taken me out of the story once or twice, it does not take away from the emotional and very real life stories that it tells. 

This novel has sat with me for days. A wonderful depiction of how sometimes we aren’t allowed to fully grieve someone close to us when the world around us keeps us from doing so. This is a story that I recommend everyone to read and then to research for themselves to see the real horrors of things like United Fruits purchase of land and then ejection of all the people who lived in the area or the 2019 murder of activist Sergio Rojas Ortíz, which despite all evidence of his life being threatened and being shot 15 times, case was dismissed as insufficient evidence. 

Thank you again to Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group, Ari Tison and Netgalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Let’s keep the conversation going below! Do you think you’ll be picking this book up? Have another novel that sounds like this and you recommend I pick up?