A spare, lyrical Native American coming of age story set in rural Oklahoma in the late 1980s
Brandon Hobson is a recipient of the 2016 Pushcart Prize, and his writing has appeared in such places as Conjunctions, NOON, The Paris Review Daily, and The Believer. He is the author of Desolation of Avenues Untold, Deep Ellum, and The Levitationist. He teaches writing in Oklahoma, where he lives with his wife and two children. He is a member of the Cherokee Nation Tribe.
Finalist for the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction
Finalist for the 2019 SFC Literary Prize
Longlisted for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award
Longlisted for the 2019 Aspen Words Literary Prize
NPR's Code Switch Best Books of 2018
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2018
A Southern Living Best Book of 2018
2018 Reading the West Book Award Winner for Fiction
2019 In the Margins Book Award Top Fiction Novel
Praise for Where the Dead Sit Talking
“Set in rural Oklahoma in the 1980s, Hobson's tale reverberates
with the hope of connection as it explores Native displacement and
loss.”
—The New York Times
“An extraordinary book.”
—NPR's Code Switch
“A strange and powerful Native American Bildungsroman . . .
this novel breathes with a dark, pulsing life of its own.”
—The Tulsa Voice
“Soulful.”
—Dallas Morning News
“This is a dark story that depicts the loneliness and pain of
unwanted children and the foster care system where they end up . .
. authentic and humane.”
—The Oklahoman
“A dark, twisting, emotional novel about a teenage Cherokee boy
dislocated in the foster care system . . . The novel holds a
difficult dialogue on intergenerational trauma, the effects of
separating children from their Nations, and the perilous outcomes
if we do not make urgent changes to the systems forcing American
Indians to assimilate and disconnect. This may be set in the past,
however, the same cycles exist today, showing that we have not yet
learned the necessary lessons to interrupt the trauma.”
—Electric Literature
“A powerful testament to one young Native American’s will to
survive his lonely existence. Sequoyah’s community and experience
is one we all need to know, and Hobson delivers the young man’s
story in a deeply profound narrative.”
—KMUW Wichita Public Radio
“I was really struck by the intelligence of the book, as well as
the significance of the story that he's telling, about what it's
like to be a modern Indigenous person in this country, as a Native
American, and to be in the foster care system. I was very struck by
the plot of it—it's very well written, it's very propulsive, it's
very readable for literary fiction, and I would recommend it
heartily to book clubs.”
—Min Jin Lee, author of Pachinko
“Imagine a plot hybrid of Dickens and George Saunders.”
—The Brooklyn Rail
“Dreamlike prose . . . Where the Dead Sit Talking is an
exploration of whether it’s possible for a person to heal when all
the world sees is a battlefield of scars.”
—San Diego CityBeat
“The latest from Hobson is a smart, dark novel of adolescence,
death, and rural secrets set in late-1980s Oklahoma. Hobson’s
narrative control is stunning, carrying the reader through scenes
and timelines with verbal grace and sparse detail. Far more than a
mere coming-of-age story, this is a remarkable and moving
novel.”
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
“A masterly tale of life and death, hopes and fears, secrets and
lies.”
—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
“Hobson's eloquent prose and story line will keep literary and
general fiction readers turning pages. Its teen protagonists offer
interest for young adults.”
—Library Journal
“[A] poignant and disturbing coming-of-age story . . . Hobson
presents a painfully visceral drama about the overlooked lives of
those struggling on the periphery of mainstream society.”
—Booklist
“Hobson's gift to the reader is the hopeful persistence he instills
in Sequoyah, despite his challenges with identity and belonging. He
is a young man who is clearly scarred but thankfully not
defeated.”
—Shelf Awareness
“In Where the Dead Sit Talking, Hobson is once again in fine
form, delivering a lyrical, somewhat brutal, and very touching
coming of age story set in rural Oklahoma in the late 1980s. At
once elegant and straightforward, poetic and cold in a way that
approximates noir . . . a beautifully written novel.”
—Vol. 1 Brooklyn
“Intriguing . . . Hobson has written here a dark and arresting
tale.”
—Literary Hub
“Where the Dead Sit Talking is a sensitive and searching
exploration of a youth forged in turbulence, in the endless
aftermath of displacement and loss. Sequoyah’s voice is powerfully
singular—both wounded and wounding—and this novel is a thrilling
confirmation of Brandon Hobson’s immense gifts on the page.”
—Laura van den Berg, author of Find Me
“Weird and intimate, like Ottessa
Moshfegh's Eileen, Where the Dead Sit Talking takes
us to a strange, dangerous place normally kept hidden. From the
opening hook, with the unhurried authority of a master, Brandon
Hobson initiates the reader into the secret lives of lost and
unwanted teenagers trying to survive in an uncaring world. Creepy,
sad, yet queerly thrilling.”
—Stewart O'Nan, author of The Speed Queen
“Where the Dead Sit Talking is a tender and unflinching look
at shell-shocked young lives as they try in the eddies of foster
care to keep their heads above water. Hobson writes with a humane
authority but without giving his characters any alibis. What we
have instead is a careful look at what it means to be physically
and psychically scarred, abandoned by parents, Native American in a
white world, haunted by death, and on the verge of becoming an
adult. A wonderful, harrowing novel.”
—Brian Evenson, author of The Open Curtain
“I fear and ferociously admire everything Brandon Hobson creates.
He is the only person who can describe the way an object becomes
whole when we have enough time to look at it or the presence of a
loved one in the air even after she is gone. In this heartbreaking
and vital novel there is an unconfessable world of pain, desire,
and longing. A careful oscillating dance around avoiding the pangs
of abandonment and wanting to go through them all at once to get
the suffering over with. Sequoyah, his scars, and eye makeup will
leave you with wide eyes and a brimming heart.”
—Chiara Barzini, author of Things That Happened Before the
Earthquake
“One of those novels that comes around rarely in Native American
letters, one that quietly changes everything.”
—Anomaly
Praise for Brandon Hobson
“Restrained, dark, and strangely silent . . . If you've ever had a
homecoming laced with sadness and longing, you'll relate to [Deep
Ellum].”
—Ottessa Moshfegh, New York Times bestselling author
of Homesick for Another World
“[Deep Ellum] stands out as a miniature masterpiece of mood.”
—San Diego City Beat
“Hobson has a remarkable ability to travel deep into a very dark
place and come out plausibly on the side of light.”
—Dawn Raffel, Reader’s Digest
“Hobson writes novels that are very bright and incredibly dark,
surprisingly funny and wonderfully complex.”
—Vol. 1 Brooklyn
“With Deep Ellum, Hobson establishes a city that is as lively as
Twin Peaks, a Walden that offers little peace, no meditation, a
reversal of transcendentalism.”
—Electric Literature
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