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grogu_djarin's review
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
cweichel's review
4.0
Prepare to hand yourself over into the words of a maestro storyteller.
Tim Tingle's ensemble of characters are situated in the town of Skullyville, Oklahoma in the year beginning in 1896. Rose, the narrator relates the events of a time that was filled with evil and racism for the Choctaw people.
Each chapter is a different movement in a symphonic chronicle that rises and falls in circular crescendos of love and violence, sweetness and suspense.
Narrative strands ebb, flow, are seemingly abandoned, then return adding counterpoint and confluence to the tale, only to be dropped and woven time and again into the mythical rhythm of the story.
Tim Tingle's ensemble of characters are situated in the town of Skullyville, Oklahoma in the year beginning in 1896. Rose, the narrator relates the events of a time that was filled with evil and racism for the Choctaw people.
Each chapter is a different movement in a symphonic chronicle that rises and falls in circular crescendos of love and violence, sweetness and suspense.
Narrative strands ebb, flow, are seemingly abandoned, then return adding counterpoint and confluence to the tale, only to be dropped and woven time and again into the mythical rhythm of the story.
pyrrhicspondee's review
5.0
This book was lovely. I don't usually read "lovely" books--more often funny or brutal or complex. But oh my. Tingle weaves a lot of different stories together, blends Christianity and Choctaw beliefs, and paints such a beautiful picture of this tiny town from a hundred years ago. I cannot recommend this enough. I cried more than once.
maddiewagner's review
4.0
A wonderful magical realism western. I read this for my Book Riot Read Harder challenge as the western - when you have to read a western but are dedicated to not reading books by white men for the year it's hard to find a book that qualifies but I'd argue as this is set in the later half of the 19th century in the territory that becomes Oklahoma this counts. Tingle doesn't waste words - his writing is succinct yet descriptive. The book is framed by the "main character" Rose looking back on her childhood from her old age in the 1960s however the book's narration jumps around with a third person narrator following various characters including Marshal Hardwicke, his wife Ona Mae, Maggie, and Reverend Willis. This style shows how the societies of both Choctaw and Nahullo (white people of the water) operated independently and intermingled the territory at the end of the 19th century.
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