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Summary
Summary
In Kind of Kin by award-winning author Rilla Askew, when a church-going, community-loved, family man is caught hiding a barn-full of illegal immigrant workers, he is arrested and sent to prison. This shocking development sends ripples through the town--dividing neighbors, causing riffs amongst his family, and spurring controversy across the state.
Using new laws in Oklahoma and Alabama as inspiration, Kind of Kin is a story of self-serving lawmakers and complicated lawbreakers, Christian principle and political scapegoating.
Rilla Askew's funny and poignant novel explores what happens when upstanding people are pushed too far--and how an ad-hoc family, and ultimately, an entire town, will unite to protect its own.
Author Notes
Rilla Askew is the author of "Strange Business," a collection of stories, & the novel "The Mercy Seat," which was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner award & the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Association Award, & was the winner of the Western Heritage Award & the Oklahoma Book Award.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
This compelling, deliberate novel from Askew (The Mercy Seat), told from a rotation of voices and perspectives, delves into the lives of an Oklahoma family and community in the aftermath of new immigration legislation. Sweet Kirkendall is a smalltown wife and mother whose marriage is on autopilot; her son, Carl, is becoming a bully; and, to make matters worse, after her sister dies, her nephew, Dustin, has come to live with them. When Sweet's father is arrested for harboring undocumented workers, the pre-trial publicity and Carl's growing aggression drive Sweet to question her core values. With her father refusing to defend himself in court, and Dustin on the lam with one of the farm's illegal aliens, Sweet musters the courage to act decisively in defense of her family and against the implementation of the controversial new law. The delineation of this fictional state immigration law gets the book off to a slow start, but later Askew introduces an inspired thread about the political ambitions of the bill's sponsor, state representative Monica Moorehouse, a complex and conflicted character. Although the sections narrated by Dustin sometimes miss the mark, whenever Sweet or Monica are front and center, this novel is rich, rewarding, and humane. Agent: PJ Mark, Janklow & Nesbit. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
An Oklahoma-centric novel about the "crime" of harboring illegal Mexican workers. Georgia Ann "Sweet" Kirkendall is distressed--her father, Robert John Brown (emphasis on the second two names), has been arrested and charged for the felony crime of "transporting, harboring, concealing, and sheltering undocumented aliens in furtherance of their illegal presence in the state of Oklahoma," as the legalese goes. Brown doesn't deny the charge but rather embraces it, for he sees it as part of his Christian duty to help others. Sweet doesn't quite see it the same way as her father, however, and she has a number of other things to worry about, including her son, Carl Albert, and most especially her nephew, Dustin, who's only 10 but shows considerable empathy toward both his grandfather and the plight of the Mexican workers. In fact, he runs away, causing further worry and grief for his aunt. (His mother had died a few years before.) Brown's situation is exacerbated since it becomes something of a local cause clbre when Sheriff Arvin Holloway begins to rail against "criminals" like Brown--Holloway has no sympathy for the justification of "doing one's Christian duty." State Representative Monica Moorehouse also wants to make political hay, for she's sponsoring a "get tough on illegal aliens" crime bill and fears her political ambitions might be hurt if sympathy builds for Brown. Askew deftly weaves all this together in a narrative that foregrounds a number of important contemporary issues: religion, immigration, the economy and the effect of all of these on family life.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
WHAT might have been a political polemic or a partisan pitch in the hands of a lesser writer, Rilla Askew's fourth novel is a study in the categories and contradictions that dissolve families, dissect communities, and split nations. With a topic as incendiary as immigration at the story's core, Askew could have trod heavily over her subject matter and garnered passionate responses from both sides of the political divide. Instead she personalizes the issue, exploring with a deft hand and an unflinching moral vision the gray areas of an argument so often presented in black and white. Set in the tiny, churchgoing town of Cedar, Okla., "Kind of Kin" is a democratic novel, employing multiple points of view across a dynamic range of characters. Dustin is a thoughtful 10-year-old boy with a bruised heart and no parents, who fiercely loves his grandfather. Said grandfather, Bob Brown, a born-again community mainstay, is currently behind bars for harboring illegal Mexican immigrants in his barn, leaving Dustin to live with his aunt. There's also Luis Celayo, a well-intentioned but doomed immigrant searching far and wide for his sons; Monica Moorehouse, a self-serving lawmaker determined to make a name for herself in national politics with her recent antiimmigrant legislation; and Arvin Holloway, a bullying, egocentric sheriff who enforces the law with an iron fist and can't resist the slightest whiff of media attention. All of them are vividly drawn by Askew, who juggles their divergent perspectives to create a broader view of the events as they unfold. But at the heart of the novel is Sweet Kirkendall. It is her efforts to restore order in an increasingly chaotic universe that ultimately earn the reader's trust. What's left of Sweet's family is falling apart at its threadbare seams. Her father, Bob, has been jailed and is scheduled to stand trial. Worse, on the sage legal advice of a drug dealer, he refuses to defend himself against the charges. Sweet's son, Carl Albert (named for the Oklahoma congressman), is bullying Dustin daily, to the point where Sweet fears their schoolteachers will notice. As if that's not enough, her father-in-law exists in a vegetative state in her living room and needs constant care, which Sweet is unable to provide. Adding to this litany of woes, Sweet's niece is also harboring an illegal immigrant - her recently deported husband, who has returned to the States unannounced. And meanwhile, Sweet has virtually nobody to turn to for support. Her husband, who unbeknown to her has been keeping an ugly secret, works long hours, often off the grid and completely out of contact. DOWN to a few precious dollars and dwindling resources, Sweet is nearly out of patience by the time the narrative begins picking up steam. Askew's solid prose serves the pulse of the story without calling much attention to the author - and make no mistake, this story has a furious pulse. Weighty themes and extraordinary circumstances quickly converge in a manner reminiscent of another tale of cultural collisions, T.C. Boyle's terrific 1995 novel, "The Tortilla Curtain." Askew may not exhibit Boyle's signature brand of verbal exuberance, nor is she quite Boyle's equal in the arena of biting wit (though she comes admirably close in her portrayal of Sheriff Holloway); still, she paces her story masterfully. The reader turns the pages with a mounting sense of anticipation and dread, as the disappearance of Sweet's nephew, along with her father's impending trial, leads to a media blitz, all manner of political posturing and eventually a standoff at Cedar's First Baptist Church. Throughout the escalating action, Sweet is continually called upon to make big decisions with enormous consequences, pitting her Christian ethics against her civic duties, in an effort to do the right thing. If the novel casts Sweet Kirkendall in a heroic light, State Representative Monica Moorehouse assumes the role of villain. With her affected drawl and strategic wardrobe choices, Moorehouse, encouraged by her crack political-adviser husband, is a woman so hardened by politics that she expresses active contempt for her constituents ("How many times do I have to tell you not to say 'these people,'" her husband reminds her). She can hardly stand Oklahoma, which she hopes to escape soon for the greener political pastures of Washington, D.C. Among all the characters, including the illegal immigrants, Moorehouse distinguishes herself as the novel's outsider. Although she speaks in terms of highminded principles, her only real concern seems to be personal achievement. Positioning herself for a photo-op after pushing through a bill with an "English only" provision, "she happened to glance over her shoulder and realized that the Indians were standing in the food line behind her, looking just entirely too dignified and offended." Moorehouse, however, is not the only self-serving character on display in "Kind of Kin." Logan Morgan, the young television reporter who breaks the news story that frames the novel, is just slightly less repulsive in her motives. Morgan hopes for even more tragedies to befall those involved in the events she covers, if only to give her story legs. Likewise, Sheriff Holloway, formerly a "chuffy little coward, intimidator, bellowing schoolyard tyrant," has "translated these lifelong traits into a fine law enforcement career." These three characters in particular present one side of what is arguably the biggest divide in "Kind of Kin": a divide in values. Moorehouse, Morgan and Holloway enthusiastically cast aside other people in favor of their individual stations, betraying only the flimsiest sense of duty to anyone but themselves; whereas Sweet, Dustin and Bob Brown, and Luis Celayo - all of whom are already working at various disadvantages - are willing to put their personal welfare, and even their safety, on the line for the sake of what they see as the greater good. Beyond its political, racial and religious underpinnings, "Kind of Kin" is also a novel about class. Askew juxtaposes the cushy life afforded a supposedly public official like Monica Moorehouse, whose primary concerns seem to revolve around the perfect shade of hair color and public perception, with the struggles of the Kirkendall-Brown clan as they scrape by dollar to dollar, minute to minute. While the Moorehouses and Holloways of this world relish their stature and covet more of the same, forever leveraging their positions and seeking to expand their influence, everybody else is just trying to get through the day. Ironically, Askew seems to be saying, it is the working class, the marginalized and, yes, even the illegal - those peripheral, everyman characters whom Moorehouse and her ilk look upon with such disdain - who ultimately provide the heartbeat not only of Cedar, Okla., but of the nation. 'How many times do I have to tell you not to say "these people,"' an ambitious politician is reminded. Jonathan Evison's most recent novel is "The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving."
Library Journal Review
When Oklahoma passes a tough new law making harboring "illegals" a felony, Robert John Brown refuses to defend himself and is sent to prison for hiding a barn full of undocumented migrant workers. Brown's daughter Sweet is left to manage a family (including a troublesome son and an orphaned nephew) that is coming apart at the seams as her marriage collapses under the stress. -VERDICT A Pen/Faulkner Award and Dublin IMPAC Prize nominee, Askew (Strange Business; Harpsong; Fire in Beulah) has written a realistic and powerful narrative that follows the complex motives of Oklahoma's lawmakers and those citizens who choose to break a law they don't support. She populates her novel with boldly drawn characters from multiple ethnic and political backgrounds. Sure to appeal to readers of Adriana Trigiani and Barbara Kingsolver. [See Prepub Alert, 7/30/12.]-Mara Dabrishus, Ursuline Coll. Lib., Pepper Pike, OH (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.