BookBright
ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSMara Racette has just moved to Browning, Montana, on the Blackfeet Reservation, and after months of feeling like an outsider at her new school, she is stunned when the Arnoux family calls her forward during a giveaway ceremony at North American Indian Days. The ceremony honors Loren Arnoux's late grandfather and keeps alive the memory of Loren's older sister, Rayanne, who disappeared three months earlier on her way to the school bus. That same night, Rayanne's best friend, Samantha White Tail, turns up strangled in a horse trailer just yards from the powwow crowd, and Mara is one of the last people to see her alive. As tribal police and the FBI struggle for leads, Loren pulls Mara, star athlete Eli First Kill, and rancher's son Brody Clark into her own hunt for the truth, even as suspicion starts to fall on each of them in turn. Told through four alternating teenage narrators and eerie interludes pulled from a true crime podcast, this fast moving mystery follows a fractured friend group racing to figure out who they can trust before the killer strikes again.
Free Battle of the Books questions for Looking for Smoke
SPOILERSEvery one of these has the same answer, and that is the point. In a real battle the question is read aloud with a dozen other books in play, and students have a few seconds to place it. Here is what a battle might ask about Looking for Smoke. Use them as a quiz, a trivia round, or BOTB practice.
Where in the book they come from
- Early in the book
In what book does an emcee tell the crowd to grab frybread before the stands close down?
✓ Answer
Looking for Smoke by K. A. Cobell
The emcee keeps the powwow loose with jokes between announcements, and he admits he has already eaten a few frybreads himself. A moment later his tone changes completely as he introduces the Arnoux family's Honor Song for Loren's late grandfather.
- First half
In what book are race bibs taped across a missing girl's bedroom wall in a perfect grid?
✓ Answer
Looking for Smoke by K. A. Cobell
Loren finally makes herself open the door and finds the room exactly as it always was, with running spikes lined up in the closet and a hint of vanilla in the air. She goes through every drawer and pocket and mattress and finds nothing that explains anything.
- First half
In what book does a little girl say homemade spaghetti is worse than a cold can of SpaghettiOs?
✓ Answer
Looking for Smoke by K. A. Cobell
Eli is trying to cook real food for Cherie now that he has a little money from selling a horse, and she is deeply unimpressed. She suggests he might just be bad at cooking, and he warns her not to insult her Elder or she gets cleanup duty.
- Second half
In what book does a suspect return from a parking lot carrying two bottles of purple huckleberry soda?
✓ Answer
Looking for Smoke by K. A. Cobell
Mara and Eli are convinced Andrew Stern is about to grab a teenage girl by her car, and Eli actually breaks cover to stop him. Stern walks right past her to his own car for sodas, which is the moment the teens learn how easily fear can rewrite what they think they are seeing.
- Second half
In what book does a detective answer a missing person call with "I'll get there when I get there"?
✓ Answer
Looking for Smoke by K. A. Cobell
The radio exchange right after Geraldine's call has dispatch coding Rayanne's disappearance as low priority and Detective Youngbull in no hurry. The line hangs over the rest of the investigation as proof of how much time was lost at the very start.
- Near the end
In what book does a grandfather call a hawk perched on an electric pole good medicine?
✓ Answer
Looking for Smoke by K. A. Cobell
Loren opens her door ready to send Mara away and instead notices the red hawk on Mara's old high school sweatshirt, which reminds her of her grandpa Dillon buying horses years ago. The memory is the one thing that talks her into letting Mara in, and it changes the direction of the whole investigation.
