Where the Dead Sit Talking

FINALIST FOR THE 2018 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF 2018
NPR'S CODE SWITCH BEST BOOK OF 2018
A SOUTHERN LIVING BEST BOOK OF 2018
WINNER OF THE 2018 READING THE WEST BOOK AWARD
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 INTERNATIONAL DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD

A dark, authentically-voiced, Native American coming of age story set in rural Oklahoma in the late 1980s.

With his single mother in jail, Sequoyah, a fifteen-year-old Cherokee boy, is placed in foster care with the Troutt family. Literally and figuratively scarred by his unstable upbringing, Sequoyah has spent years mostly keeping to himself, living with his emotions pressed deep below the surface—that is, until he meets the seventeen-year-old Rosemary, another youth staying with the Troutts.
 
Sequoyah and Rosemary bond over their shared Native American backgrounds 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.