num_pages: 289
description: National Book Award finalistBest book of 2018: Kirkus Southern Living and NPR Code SwitchReading the West Book Award winnerAspen Words Literary Prize longlist2020 International Dublin Literary Award longlistSet in rural Oklahoma during the late 1980s Where the Dead Sit Talking is a startling authentically voiced and lyrically written Native American coming-of-age story. With his single mother in jail Sequoyah a fifteen-year-old Cherokee boy is placed in foster care. Literally and figuratively scarred by his mothers years of substance abuse Sequoyah keeps mostly to himself living with his emotions pressed deep below the surface. At least until he meets seventeen-year-old Rosemary a troubled artist who also lives with the family.Sequoyah and Rosemary bond over their shared Native American background and tumultuous paths through the foster care system but as Sequoyahs feelings toward Rosemary deepen the precariousness of their lives and the scars of their pasts threaten to undo them both.
language: English
title: Where the Dead Sit Talking
publisher: Soho Press