The Nature of Things

  Kelli Jo Ford's debut novel is set in Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma and in North Texas during the 1980s oil bust and later. Ford herself is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and she draws upon her familiarity with that culture in telling the stories of four generations of Cherokee women. The primary focus of the stories is on the third and fourth generations, mother Justine and daughter Reney. We see Justine's mother and grandmother as they relate to and interact with these two characters. The narrative is constructed as a series of stories, a method of storytelling that can go seriously off the rails in the wrong hands, but Ford mostly keeps her chronicle on track by making Justine and Reney the linchpins of it.  We meet Justine at age fifteen. She is a talented athlete but her mother won't allow her to play basketball because men would see her legs. Her mother, Lulu, is a devout Holy Roller and she makes her daughter attend church every time the doors are open. The girl mu...