Both on and off the rez, characters contend with identity as contemporary Haudenosaunee peoples; the stories "cross bloodlines, heart lines, and cultural lines, powerfully charting whta it is to be human in a world that works to divide us" (Susan Power, author of Sacred Wilderness).

In Living on the Borderlines, intergenerational memory and trauma slip into everyday life: a teenager struggles to understand her grandmother's silences, a man contemplates what it means to preserve tradition in the wake of the "disappearing Indian" myth, and an older woman challenges her town's prejudice while uniting an unlikely family.

With these stories, debut writer Melissa Michal weaves together an understated and contemplative collection exploring what it means to be Indigenous.