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A review by leahtylerthewriter
Stealing by Margaret Verble
5.0
See full review in the ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION: https://www.ajc.com/life/arts-culture/book-review-stealing-humanizes-mistreatment-of-indigenous-youth/GPF3OH75MFEAFMUFBJZVRSR3KI/
Pulitzer-Prize finalist Margaret Verble’s fourth novel “Stealing” is an historical fiction about a young Cherokee girl in the Midwest who is removed from her family and placed in a residential school in the 1950s. Verble wrote this tender and eye-opening tale in 2007 but didn’t find a receptive audience until the First Nations boarding school scandal in Canada broke in 2021. With a fresh social context in place to frame her narrative, Verble has delivered a nuanced yet powerful examination of the impact of forced Christianity on the indigenous population. And what a story she tells.
Karen “Kit” Crockett narrates her own tale through a diary she’s writing while interned at the fictional Ashley Lordard Children’s Home. She weaves back and forth through time, starting at age 6 after the death of her mother and revealing how she came to be removed from her father’s custody at age 12. Instead of being sent to live with her Cherokee family, who are desperate to care for her, she’s placed in a boarding school so she can “get some education and good moral values...”
Pulitzer-Prize finalist Margaret Verble’s fourth novel “Stealing” is an historical fiction about a young Cherokee girl in the Midwest who is removed from her family and placed in a residential school in the 1950s. Verble wrote this tender and eye-opening tale in 2007 but didn’t find a receptive audience until the First Nations boarding school scandal in Canada broke in 2021. With a fresh social context in place to frame her narrative, Verble has delivered a nuanced yet powerful examination of the impact of forced Christianity on the indigenous population. And what a story she tells.
Karen “Kit” Crockett narrates her own tale through a diary she’s writing while interned at the fictional Ashley Lordard Children’s Home. She weaves back and forth through time, starting at age 6 after the death of her mother and revealing how she came to be removed from her father’s custody at age 12. Instead of being sent to live with her Cherokee family, who are desperate to care for her, she’s placed in a boarding school so she can “get some education and good moral values...”