About this item
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.
About the Author
Kelli Jo Ford's debut, Crooked Hallelujah, will be published by Grove Press in July. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including The Paris Review's Plimpton Prize, a 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, and The Missouri Review, among other places. She lives in Virginia with her husband and daughter. She is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.
