Maud's Line

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016. First Mariner Books Edition [stated], First Printing [Stated]. Trade paperback. Very good. [10], 294 pages. The author is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, and has set her novel on her family's allotment land. This work was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Eighteen-year-old Maud Nail lives with her rogue father and sensitive brother on one of the allotments parceled out by the U.S. government to the Cherokees when their land was confiscated for Oklahoma's statehood. Maud's days are filled with hard work and simple pleasures--yet often marked by violence and tragedy. When a newcomer with good looks and books rides down her section line, she takes notice, and soon finds herself facing a series of high-stakes decisions that will determine her future and those of her loved ones. Margaret Verble is an American author. As a voting citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, her book Maud's Line was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Verble was born in Muskogee County, Oklahoma but grew up in Nashville, Tennessee. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree, Master's degree, and Ed.D. from the University of Kentucky. After earning her degrees, she moved to Lexington, Kentucky to run a business. In 2015, her first novel Maud's Line was named a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Maud's Line focuses on her Cherokee nation heritage during the 1920's through the lens of a fictional woman named Maud Nail. She later published a prequel to her first novel titled Cherokee America, set in 1875. A debut novel chronicling the life and loves of a headstrong, earthy, and magnetic heroine. Eastern Oklahoma, 1928. Eighteen-year-old Maud Nail lives with her rogue father and sensitive brother on one of the allotments parceled out by the U.S. Government to the Cherokees when their land was confiscated for Oklahoma's statehood. Maud's days are filled with hard work and simple pleasures, but often marked by violence and tragedy, a fact that she accepts with determined practicality. Her prospects for a better life are slim, but when a newcomer with good looks and books rides down her section line, she takes notice. Soon she finds herself facing a series of high-stakes decisions that will determine her future and those of her loved ones. Maude's Line is accessible, sensuous, and vivid. It will sit on the bookshelf alongside novels by Jim Harrison, Louise Erdrich, Sherman Alexie, and other beloved chroniclers of the American West and its people.