When her father is tossed in jail for hiding a barn full of undocumented Mexicans, her ten-year-old nephew disappears, and her son comes home, bringing trouble with him, Sweet is driven to desperate actions to fix things, which tests her family, friends,and neighbors in unexpected ways.

Kind of Kin

Literature & Fiction

Askew, Rilla

Humor & Satire

Ecco

With the passing of a new state law, it becomes a felony to harbor an undocumented immigrant in Oklahoma. So when Robert John Brown, a churchgoing family man and respected community member, is caught hiding a barnful of migrant workers with no papers, he is arrested and sent to prison. Meanwhile, his ten-year-old grandson Dustin tries to help the sole escapee of the raid reunite with his family, and his granddaughter, Misty, is struggling to raise her daughter alone after her husband, an undocumented immigrant himself, has been deported. Then there's Brown's daughter Sweet, who finds her life unraveling: her father is refusing to speak in court to defend himself, her nephew is missing, her niece is in need of shelter, and the stress of it all is destroying her marriage.
Rilla Askew's brilliant, hilarious, and heartfelt novel follows a handful of complicated lawmakers and lawbreakers as workers are exiled, friends turn informers, and families are torn apart in a statewide exodus of Hispanics. In the end, Kind of Kin reveals how an ad hoc family, and an entire town, will unite to do anything necessary to protect its own.

Kind of Kin: A Novel

Dramas & Plays

A moving fictional account of the fading life of a shrinking town, this powerful work chronicles 25 years of memory and experience in the small town of Cedar, Oklahoma. From the fears and discoveries of childhood, through the revelations of adolescence, into the troubled years of adulthood, Rilla Askew paints a strong portrait of what it means to be human.

Strange Business

United States

Penguin??Books

The Mercy Seat

Few first novels garner the kind of powerful praise awarded this epic story that takes place on the dusty, remorseless Oklahoma frontier, where two brothers are deadlocked in a furious rivalry. Fayette is an enterprising schemer hoping to cash in on his brother's talents as a gunsmith. John, determined not to repeat the crime that forced both families to flee their Kentucky homes, doggedly follows his tenacious brother west, while he watches his own family disintegrate. 
Wondrously told through the wary eyes of John's ten-year-old daughter, Mattie, whose gift of premonition proves to be both a blessing and a curse, The Mercy Seat resounds with the rhythms of the Old Testament even as it explores the mysteries of the Native American spirit world. Sharing Faulkner's understanding of the inescapable pull of family and history, and Cormac McCarthy's appreciation of the stark beauty of the American wilderness, Rilla Askew imbues this momentous work with her tremendous energy and emotional range. It is an extraordinary novel from a prodigious new talent. 
<ul><li> Strange Business, a collection of linked stories that won the 1993 Oklahoma Book Award, is available from Penguin.</li></ul>

Set during the tense days of the Oklahoma oil rush, Rilla Askew's Fire in Beulah is a mesmerizing story that centers on the complex relationship between Althea Whiteside, an oil wildcatter's high-strung wife, and Graceful, her enigmatic black maid. Their juxtaposing stories—and those of others close to them—unfold against a volatile backdrop of oil-boom opulence, fear, hatred, lynchings that climax in the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, when whites burned the city's properous black community. Askew's award-winning first novel, The Mercy Seat, was praised for its astute diepiction of family bonds and the beauty of American landscape. Now she explores the American race story with the same perception.

Fire in Beulah

Penguin Publishing Group

A collection of interconnecting tales recount twenty-five years of life in the small town of Cedar, Oklahoma, incisively capturing the lives and deaths, triumphs and tragedies, dreams and desires of the town's inhabitants. A first collection.

Viking Adult

A clairvoyant child whose gift makes her the object of a tug-of-war between Christians and Native Americans in 1880s Oklahoma ignites a blood feud between her father and her bootlegging uncle. A first novel. 25,000 first printing. Tour.

The author of The Mercy Seat serves up a stunning new novel set in 1920s Oklahoma that chronicles the complex relationship that exists between Althea Whiteside, the wife of an oil wildcatter, and her black maid, Graceful, as they become caught up in the events surrounding the Tulsa race riot of 1921. 15,000 first printing.

Harlan Singer, a harmonica-playing troubadour, shows up in the Thompson family’s yard one morning. He steals their hearts with his music, and their daughter with his charm. Soon he and his fourteen-year-old bride, Sharon, are on the road, two more hobos of the Great Depression, hitchhiking and hopping freights across the Great Plains in search of an old man and the settlement of Harlan’s long-standing debt.
Finding shelter in hobo jungles and Hoovervilles, the newlyweds careen across the 1930s landscape in a giant figure eight with Oklahoma in the middle. Sharon’s growing doubts about her husband’s quest set in motion events that turn Harlan Singer into a hero while blinding her to the dark secret of his journey. A love story infused with history and folk tradition, Harpsong shows what happened to the friends and neighbors Steinbeck’s Joads left behind.
In this moving, redemptive tale inspired by Oklahoma folk heroes, Rilla Askew continues her exploration of the American story. Harpsong is a novel of love and loss, of adventure and renewal, and of a wayfaring orphan’s search for home—all set to the sounds of Harlan’s harmonica. It shows us the strength and resilience of a people who, in the face of unending despair, maintain their faith in the land.

Harpsong (Volume 1) (Stories & Storytellers Series)

Literary

University of Oklahoma Press

A love story about Dust Bowl heroes who didn’t leave for California Harlan Singer, a harmonica-playing troubadour, shows up in the Thompson family’s yard one morning. He steals their hearts with his music, and their daughter with his charm. Soon he and his fourteen-year-old bride, Sharon, are on the road, two more hobos of the Great Depression, hitchhiking and hopping freights across the Great Plains in search of an old man and the settlement of Harlan’s long-standing debt. Finding shelter in hobo jungles and Hoovervilles, the newlyweds careen across the 1930s landscape in a giant figure eight with Oklahoma in the middle. Sharon’s growing doubts about her husband’s quest set in motion events that turn Harlan Singer into a hero while blinding her to the dark secret of his journey. A love story infused with history and folk tradition, Harpsong shows what happened to the friends and neighbors Steinbeck’s Joads left behind. In this moving, redemptive tale inspired by Oklahoma folk heroes, Rilla Askew continues her exploration of the American story. Harpsong is a novel of love and loss, of adventure and renewal, and of a wayfaring orphan’s search for home―all set to the sounds of Harlan’s harmonica. It shows us the strength and resilience of a people who, in the face of unending despair, maintain their faith in the land.

Harpsong (Volume 1) (Stories and Storytellers Series)

Contemporary

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Askew, Rilla. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Askew, Rilla

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Askew, Rilla. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Kind of Kin

Kind of Kin: A Novel

Strange Business

The Mercy Seat

Fire in Beulah

Strange Business

The Mercy Seat

Fire in Beulah

Harpsong (Volume 1) (Stories & Storytellers Series)

Harpsong (Volume 1) (Stories and Storytellers Series)