Cherokee America

By: Margaret Verble

Narrated by: Emily Sutton-Smith

From Pulitzer Prize finalist Margaret Verble, a multilayered, wholly original epic of the American frontier

A baby, a black hired hand, a bay horse, a gun, and a neighbor have all gone missing in the same corner of the Cherokee Nation West. Cherokee America Singer, known as Check, is none too pleased with these developments. As a wealthy farmer, the mother of five boys, and the matriarch of her family, she's accustomed to wielding authority. And she's determined to find out what's going on.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, complex alliances and simmering race and culture clashes unite and divide the people living on Cherokee lands. Tensions mount and violence escalates, and the long arm of white law encroaches further into Indian Territory. Determined to survive and thrive on their own terms after decades of betrayal and hardship, Check's family, friends, and neighbors must come together to avenge a crime, outwit federal authorities, and protect their sovereignty.

Inspired by Margaret Verble's family history and written with dry humor and a lot of heart, Cherokee America is a different kind of Western, one told from a Native American point of view and with a mixed-race woman at its center. Check - member of a distinguished Cherokee family, daughter of a famous soldier and a slaveholder, wife of an abolitionist - is a necessary, revelatory addition to the literature of the American frontier.

©2019 Margaret Verble (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Thought Provoking And Disquieting

If you just want to know more about Cherokee Nation life after the Trail of Tears, this story made of individual stories sewn together like a quilt totally fills that bill. If you want to see evidence of a group of people functioning as a tribe, that's here too. Lost a star because of several unnecessary stories about young men's unfulfilled sexual desires to the point of ickiness. Narration was very well done, but as much as I got out of it, this author definitely won't join my list of favorites. Not saying I'd never listen to anything by her again, but her style is absolutely not for an audience of mixed ages. Saw some reviews that spoke of humor, but frankly I must have missed that. Thought provoking, interesting, well researched but disquieting too.

Boring, yet compelling.

Next to no plot, but I wanted to see it to its conclusion. It was very well written and narrated, and informed me of life about life and race relations in the frontier Midwest in 1875, which unfortunately, we have not transcended in the intervening 150 years.

Just okay

My personal opinion is that this book would have been good had it not been for focusing and describing Connell and Hugh’s sexual practices. I skipped a lot of those parts and thankfully finished to rather mediocre ending!.

great listen

great listen but struggled to finish because story line got lost in the end.

An excellent book

So often the stories of native nations are told from the white outsider looking in. This often leaves out much of the life, culture, and the perspective of the native peoples. As an Okie and Cherokee nation citizen, I feel this fictional book does a reasonable job of showing the perspective of the Cherokee people in pre-statehood OKLA. The anxieties and hopes of their past, present, and future resonates through a compelling story of people on the frontier.

The narrator does an excellent job with the material. She gives life to the various characters. I felt connected to each and was sad when the book ended.