Crooked hallelujah

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Title:

Crooked hallelujah

Author:

Ford, Kelli Jo, author.

ISBN:

9780802149121

Edition:

1st ed.

Physical Description:

vi, 288 pages ; 22 cm.

Subject Term:

Cherokee women -- Fiction.

Mothers and daughters -- Fiction.

Home -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

Cherokee Nation, Oklahoma -- Fiction.

Texas -- Fiction.

Genre:

Historical fiction.

Summary:

It's 1974 in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and fifteen-year-old Justine grows up in a family of tough, complicated, and loyal women, presided over by her mother, Lula, and Granny. After Justine's father abandoned the family, Lula became a devout member of the Holiness Church-a community that Justine at times finds stifling and terrifying. But she does her best as a devoted daughter, until an act of violence sends her on a different path forever. Crooked Hallelujah tells the stories of Justine-a mixed-blood Cherokee woman-and her daughter, Reney, as they move from Eastern Oklahoma's Indian Country in the hopes of starting a new, more stable life in Texas amid the oil bust of the 1980s. However, life in Texas isn't easy, and Reney feels unmoored from her family in Indian Country. Against the vivid backdrop of the Red River, we see their struggle to survive in a world-of unreliable men and near-Biblical natural forces like wildfires and tornadoes-intent on stripping away their connections to one another and their very ideas of home. --

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Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Bayport Public Library	FICTION FOR	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Hardwood Creek Library (Forest Lake)	FICTION FOR	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Park Grove Library (Cottage Grove)	FICTION FOR	Searching... Unknown
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury)	FICTION FOR	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Stillwater Public Library	FICTION FOR	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

"A book that you want to share with everyone you know and one that you are desperate to keep in your own possession. A masterful debut and a new and thrilling voice for readers across the globe." -- Sarah Jessica Parker, on Instagram

It's 1974 in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and fifteen-year-old Justine grows up in a family of tough, complicated, and loyal women presided over by her mother, Lula, and Granny. After Justine's father abandoned the family, Lula became a devout member of the Holiness Church - a community that Justine at times finds stifling and terrifying. But Justine does her best as a devoted daughter until an act of violence sends her on a different path forever.

Crooked Hallelujah tells the stories of Justine--a mixed-blood Cherokee woman-- and her daughter, Reney, as they move from Eastern Oklahoma's Indian Country in the hopes of starting a new, more stable life in Texas amid the oil bust of the 1980s. However, life in Texas isn't easy, and Reney feels unmoored from her family in Indian Country. Against the vivid backdrop of the Red River, we see their struggle to survive in a world--of unreliable men and near-Biblical natural forces, like wildfires and tornados--intent on stripping away their connections to one another and their very ideas of home.

In lush and empathic prose, Kelli Jo Ford depicts what this family of proud, stubborn, Cherokee women sacrifices for those they love, amid larger forces of history, religion, class, and culture. This is a big-hearted and ambitious novel of the powerful bonds between mothers and daughters by an exquisite and rare new talent.

Author Notes

Kelli Jo Ford is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the Paris Review's Plimpton Prize, the Everett Southwest Literary Award, the Katherine Bakeless Nason Award at Bread Loaf, a National Artist Fellowship by the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation, and a Dobie Paisano Fellowship. Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review , Virginia Quarterly Review , The Missouri Review , and the anthology Forty Stories: New Writing from Harper Perennial , among other places.

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

In Plimpton Prize--winner Ford's gritty, elegant debut novel in stories, a young Cherokee woman tries to break a generational cycle of broken families while finding strength in an enduring bond with her mother. Ford opens with "Book of the Generations," about Lula, whose husband abandoned her and her child, Justine. Justine, 15, rebels against her mother's conservative Christianity by sneaking out one night to meet a boy. After Justine is raped by the boy, she becomes pregnant with Reney. Justine's love for her daughter is all-encompassing ("I think it makes Mom proud to say I am--and always have been--perfect," Reney later reflects) while Reney grows into a life that feels far from perfect. In "Hybrid Vigor," she ends up working in a Dairy Queen in Bonita, Tex.; grieving several miscarriages; and in a dead-end marriage. When her physically abusive, unemployed husband leaves her pet mule to die, Reney takes it as the last straw. Later, Ford gives Reney opportunities to pursue a healthy relationship, an education, and a stronger understanding of the legacy of her family and heritage. Ford's storytelling is urgent, her characters achingly human and complex, and her language glittering and rugged. This is a stunner. (July)

Kirkus Review

An intergenerational story about mothers and daughters struggling to keep their family together in the midst of poverty, illness, and natural disasters in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and the Red River region of Texas. Set against landscapes where oil being sucked out of the ground sounds like crying and men are swept into dust storms to disappear forever, the novel shifts primarily between the perspectives of Justine, who got pregnant at 15, and her daughter, Reney, who is torn between loyalty to her family and her aspirations to attend college and create a life of her own. Around this pair orbits a dynamic community of characters whose lives steer the family's destiny in both direct and subtle ways, including Justine's mother, Lula, who's devoted to her Holiness church, and Jack, Reney's awkward but kind supervisor at the Dairy Queen, who envisions a better life for her. In lieu of numbered chapters, Ford organizes the novel into lyrically titled sections, including "Somewhere Listening for My Name" and "What Good Is an Ark to a Fish?" that illuminate the evolution of the characters from the 1970s to the near present. Some of the most dramatic subplots unfold within the lives of minor characters--such as a young neighbor who must defend his adopted family from a home break-in--and never fully resolve, which can feel dissatisfying. Overall, though, the dynamic relationships among the main characters carry the novel across these gaps. Ford's prose glows brightest in the quiet moments among family members, such as when Reney and Justine free a trash bag full of fish into a lake and they "[shoot] off in every direction like fireworks," and in its reflections on the fraught, redemptive bonds between mothers and daughters that can feel like "a lost world...re-creating itself." A tender and ambitious praise-song of a novel about a family's fight for survival, love, and home. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

Ford, a Plimpton Prize--winning author and member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, tells a blistering Own Voices tale that spans generations. The novel reads like a set of interlinked short stories, yet there is a narrative thread that runs through each of them, connecting the reader to the heart of a family of Cherokee women. At its start, in 1974, 15-year-old Justine is coping with the pressures of her mother Lula's strict Christian church. She wants to reconnect with her father and to live like her friends do. But when Justine becomes pregnant through an act of assault, daughter Reney enters the picture, and the reader follows their journey as Reney grows. The sections cover different decades and are told from different perspectives, leading up to an electrifying conclusion. Ford's lyrical writing emphasizes both the hardships and the deeply connected relationships of the characters. The theme of the weather as villain illustrates the unopposable forces Cherokee women must contend with, including the tyranny of society and of men. A riveting and important read.

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Summary

Summary

Author Notes

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Kirkus Review

Booklist Review

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