The Removed

Books

A novel "about a [Cherokee] family's reckoning with loss and injustice...spirited, droll, and as quietly devastating as rain lifting from earth to sky" (Tommy Orange, New York Times-bestselling author of There, There). Steeped in Cherokee myths and history, a novel about a family fractured by loss-from National Book Award finalist Brandon Hobson In the fifteen years since their teenage son, Ray-Ray, was killed in a police shooting, the Echota family has been suspended in private grief. The mother, Maria, increasingly struggles to manage the onset of Alzheimer's in her husband, Ernest. Their adult daughter, Sonja, leads a life of solitude, punctuated only by spells of dizzying romantic obsession. And their son, Edgar, fled home long ago, turning to drugs to mute his feelings of alienation. With the family's annual bonfire approaching-an occasion marking both the Cherokee National Holiday and Ray-Ray's death-Maria attempts to call the family together once more. But as the reunion draws near, each of them ...