These tales of things that go bump in the night also pay tribute to the Choctaws’ preservation of their culture.
A chilling collection of stories about the tricksters and other beings of Choctaw lore who refuse to be forgotten.
When homicide detective Monique Blue Hawk thinks she’s encountering a deer in “Kashehotapolo: The Deer Man,” she makes a startling discovery: “It stepped into the clearing. Her jaw dropped. She looked lower and with a start realized that the buck did not have a deer head. She saw an old man’s face, furred like a deer, wrinkled and passive.” Kashehotapolo is one of the entities in the Choctaw pantheon, and Choctaw historian and writer Mihesuah explores the interactions of humans with these various beings in tales blending folklore with ghost stories, detective fiction, and other genres. Some are set in the years before and after the Chahtas, or Choctaws, were forced to leave their homelands and migrate west in the 1830s. Mihesuah explains in a note how the supernatural creatures in their belief system followed them west, too. Some, like the shampe—a version of Bigfoot—seem frightening but are harmless, while others are truly menacing. That includes the shape-shifting Elus Crow in “The Cornfield,” a story that wouldn’t feel out of place in a Stephen King collection. Alive for centuries, Crow, who’s an evil opa, or horned owl, preys on lost travelers who come upon his remote farm. His “helpful” directions to the main road always send them into one of his witch holes, the perfect place to keep them until he’s ready for his next meal. Some creatures, like the Little People, seem motivated more by mischief than malevolence. Others demonstrate a desire to protect Choctaw heritage, as one unfortunate young professor learns in “Tenure” after falsely claiming Choctaw lineage to further his academic career. The author’s years of research richly inform these tales, and she keeps the superlatives to a minimum—her subject matter is fantastic enough without them. Surprisingly, many of these stories resolve in satisfying ways, if not with an outright happy ending, and the author says in an introduction that “composing fictional stories about real-life histories allows me to create the endings that I want to see, and the act of facing scary cosmological creatures with a keyboard also gives me some control over what I fear.”
These tales of things that go bump in the night also pay tribute to the Choctaws’ preservation of their culture.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9780806194677
Page Count: 178
Publisher: Univ. of Oklahoma
Review Posted Online: July 10, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
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