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.
The masterful debut of Plimpton Prize winner Kelli Jo Ford, Crooked Hallelujah chronicles four generations of tough, complicated Cherokee women on their quest for freedom and family. It's 1974 in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and fifteen-year-old Justine is pregnant, much to the dismay of her holy-rolling mother, Lula, and her steadfast granny. After her daughter Reney is born, Justine escapes the stifling religious intensity of her home in Indian Country to Texas, in search of a better life amid the oil bust of the 1980s. But Reney grows up alone, watching her mother work tireless through night shifts at her factory job, and feels unmoored from her family in Oklahoma. Against the vivid backdrop of the Red River, we see mother and daughter struggle to survive in a world--of unreliable men and near-Biblical natural forces--intent on stripping away their connections to one another and their very ideas of home. With breathtaking literary intensity, Kelli Jo Ford depicts what this family of brave Cherokee women sacrifice for those they love, seamlessly weaving together teh voices of mothers and daughers as they confront life's beautiful and harrowing complexities through 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. --