Crooked Hallelujah is a splendid novel-in-stories that follows a Cherokee Nation family, repeatedly broken by choice and circumstance, via the women who remain connected throughout. The book already has significant plaudits: the seventh chapter, "Hybrid Vigor," won the Paris Review's Plimpton Prize in 2019, and Kelli Jo Ford's pre-publication manuscript won the 2019 Everett Southwest Literary Award from the University of Central Oklahoma. The book has since been longlisted for the ALA's Andrew Carnegie Medal.
Ford, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, adroitly and affectingly weaves indigenous history into her spellbinding narrative, exposing displacement, unacknowledged violence, cultural erasure, relentless racism and socioeconomic disparity. Ford has made a magnificent #OwnVoices debut with this multi-generational saga that boasts a vast and intriguing cast of characters. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon