Where the dead sit talking

Title:

Author:

Hobson, Brandon, author.

Personal Author:

Hobson, Brandon, author.

ISBN:

9781616958879

Physical Description:

273 pages ; 22 cm

Abstract:

"A spare, lyrical Native American coming of age story set in rural Oklahoma in the late 1980s. With his single mother in jail, Sequoyah, a fifteen-year-old Cherokee boy, is placed in foster care with the Troutt family. Literally and figuratively scarred by his unstable upbringing, Sequoyah has spent years mostly keeping to himself, living with his emotions pressed deep below the surface--that is, until he meets the seventeen-year-old Rosemary, another youth staying with the Troutts. Sequoyah and Rosemary bond over their shared Native American backgrounds and tumultuous paths through the foster care system, but as Sequoyah's feelings toward Rosemary deepen, the precariousness of their lives and the scars of their pasts threaten to undo them both"-- Provided by publisher.

Subject Term:

Cherokee Indians -- Fiction.

Indian foster children -- Fiction.

Teenagers -- Family relationships -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

Oklahoma -- Fiction.

Genre:

Bildungsromans.

Summary:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Shelf Number	Status
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Summary

With his single mother in jail, Sequoyah, a 15-year-old Cherokee boy, is placed in foster care with the Troutt family. Literally and figuratively scarred by his unstable upbringing, Sequoyah has spent years mostly keeping to himself, living with his emotions pressed deep below the surface - that is, until he meets 17-year-old Rosemary, another youth staying with the Troutts. Sequoyah and Rosemary bond over their shared Native American background and tumultuous paths through the foster care system, but as Sequoyah's feelings towards Rosemary deepen, the precariousness of their lives and the scars of their pasts threaten to undo them both.

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

A man looks back on 1989, the year he was 15, when he was living in a foster home and a girl who was also living there died in front of him.That's no spoiler: Sequoyah tells us about Rosemary's death within three sentences of the start of his tale. "I have been unhappy for many years now," he begins, then tells the story of how his mother went to jail on a drug charge and, after a stint at a shelter, he wound up living with the Troutts, Harold and Agnes, and their two other foster kids, the eccentric George, 13, who was prone to sleepwalking, and 17-year-old Rosemary, who shared Sequoyah's Native American heritage and liked to talk about death. They lived in rural Oklahoma, and the quiet suited them all; the Troutts were kind people, and everyone in the house liked to be by themselves a lot, with Agnes going for drives, Harold napping in the basement where he surprisingly ran an illegal bookie shop, George lying on his bed meditating, and Rosemary heading to the woods with a drawing pad. Sequoyah used to get in trouble at the shelter for slipping out at night to take walks, so he fit right into this house full of secrets and relative freedom. Hobson (Desolation of Avenues Untold, 2015, etc.) writes in a spare, even tone, and no matter what Sequoyah sayseven when it's about feeling dead inside, or about wanting to hurt someonethe reader is with him, empathizing. As in a Shirley Jackson story, everything seems perfectly ordinary until it doesn't. "Why did the entire town seem to have the same strange habits?" Sequoyah wonders. Hobson is in masterly control of his material, letting Sequoyah relax into the welcoming Troutt family home while glimpsing the menace behind the curtain. Or is the menace just inside him?A masterly tale of life and death, hopes and fears, secrets and lies. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.