Shadows & light
Grief and resilience drive the lives of a Cherokee family in Oklahoma
The idea for Brandon Hobson’s poignant new novel “The Removed” grew out of his reading about Native teens being shot by police and how gun violence affects their families for years.
Early in the novel, Ray-Ray, a Cherokee youth from Quah, Oklahoma, is shot and killed by a white police officer in a mall.
The story examines how Ray-Ray’s family grieves and seeks resilience and hope years after his death. It studies the lives of the parents, Maria and Ernest Echota, and their two adult children, Sonja and Edgar, each with their own struggles.
Sonja is sexually attracted to Vin, whose father is linked to Ray-Ray’s fatal shooting, and she is maternally drawn to Vin’s young son.
Edgar, living in Albuquerque, is trying to pull himself out of a meth addiction. He boards a train to a town called the “Darkening Land” where he confronts racism and exploitation, and finds environmental degradation.
Ultimately he puts behind that misery, walking on a road that seems to lead to “a new world with a brilliant sunlight that appeared from behind a cloud.”
His parents are desperate to reach him to invite him to a family bonfire on the upcoming anniversary of Ray-Ray’s death.
Meanwhile, the parents get an emotional boost when they take in Wyatt, a teenage Cherokee boy, for a six-day emergency foster-home placement. Wyatt is sociable, smart and shares his knowledge of Cherokee history and lore, which are elements in the novel. Wyatt reminds Maria and Ernest of Ray-Ray — his facial expressions, his mannerisms, his smile, his impersonations.
They also see Wyatt as a gift. His personality is a fount of goodness, radiating out to those he encounters. Wyatt’s power has a positive influence on Ernest, who’s been slowly sinking into an Alzheimer’s fog. Through Wyatt’s presence, Ernest’s Alzheimer’s seems to be miraculously reversing. He wants to tell his doctor, “I’m feeling damn great.”
Instead, Maria leaves a phone message for the doctor: “… something remarkable is happening with his memory. We think his Alzheimer’s is gone. He can suddenly remember things. … I think he’s been healed.” Maria wants to learn to heal herself in dealing with her long-simmering anger toward the cop who mistakenly killed Ray-Ray.
The book’s title can refer to multiple removals. The historical one, referenced in the novel, is the federal government’s infamous mid-19th century forcible removal of thousands of Cherokees (and Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws and Seminoles) from their ancestral homelands in the Southeast to “Indian Territory” west of the Mississippi. The removal is known as the Trail of Tears.
Hobson, the author, said readers can also think of “removal” in others terms — of Edgar leaving behind Albuquerque and then the Darkening Land, of Wyatt’s brief move to the care of Maria and Ernest, and his departure from them.
There is a tender separation scene after a judge places Wyatt in the custody of his grandparents.
Wyatt says good-bye to his foster parents, using the same Latin phrase, Maria recalled, that Ray-Ray used the night before he died — “Ave atque vale,” hail and farewell.
Hobson, an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, is an assistant professor of creative writing at New Mexico State University and a faculty mentor in the low residency master’s program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.
At NMSU, Hobson said in a phone interview, he does not teach his own books, rather those by Native and non-Native authors he loves. Two Native writers he’s recently taught are Kelli Jo Ford (Cherokee) and David Heska Wanbli Weiden (Sicangu Lakota).
“Both of them are exceptional prose writers who write about serious subjects and do it in very brilliant ways,” Hobson said. “I hope ‘The Removed’ opens up awareness not only to the history but to bring more light to Native American books and writing in the overall discussion of literature.”
Hobson’s 2018 novel “Where the Dead Sit Talking” was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction.