brandon hobson where the dead sit talking

As the story progresses it becomes clear that Sequoyah's neglect and social isolation have left him unable to interpret relationships, or to recognize danger, or to understand or control his own emotional impulses. The tone isn't really easy-going at all: It's affectless, a reflection of a detachment that comes from mental turmoil. It only gradually dawned on me as I read that Hobson is using simple diction and this almost easy-going narrative style to lure me into a very dark story of emotional torment and neglect.

He describes his peripheral relationships with caregiving agencies, and reports his conversations with those adults in social work and foster care who take some responsibility for him, but in actuality he spends almost all of his time alone, and in desperate and dangerous circumstances. The story is narrated by Sequoyah, a fifteen-year-old Cherokee boy whose single mother is in jail. It's a story of what survival looks like when there is no chance of a happy ending. It's an indictment of a social system in which children have no chance to escape poverty and neglect. It's a devastating chronicle of a young person growing up in desperate circumstances. This novel is simply told, but it isn't a simple story on any level. I am so very pleased that this beautifully crafted and empathetic novel has made the short list for the National Book Award! Sequoyah and Rosemary bond over their shared Native American background 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. At least until he meets seventeen-year-old Rosemary, a troubled artist who also lives with the family. Literally and figuratively scarred by his mother’s years of substance abuse, Sequoyah keeps mostly to himself, living with his emotions pressed deep below the surface.

With his single mother in jail, Sequoyah, a fifteen-year-old Cherokee boy, is placed in foster care. Set in rural Oklahoma during the late 1980s, Where the Dead Sit Talking is a startling, authentically voiced and lyrically written Native American coming-of-age story. Best book of 2018: Kirkus, Southern Living, and NPR Code SwitchĢ020 International Dublin Literary Award longlist

Brandon hobson where the dead sit talking