Margaret Verble

Magic City Books is proud to welcome Pulitzer Prize Finalist Margaret Verble for an in-person event to celebrate her latest novel, Stealing, on Thursday April 20 at Zarrow Regional Library, 2224 W. 51st Street. This free event will be at 7:00 pm and feature a conversation between Margaret and Oscar Hokeah, winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award for his debut novel, Calling For a Blanket Dance. Following the conversation Margaret will be signing copies of Stealing as well as her previous novels. 

Stealing is a gripping, gut-punch of a novel about a Cherokee child removed from her family and sent to a Christian boarding school in the 1950s–an ambitious, eye-opening reckoning of history and small-town prejudices. 

Stealing is available now at Magic City Books and will be for sale at the event. You can purchase a copy online to have signed and shipped to you, https://magiccitybooks.square.site/product/stealing/1132. Books will be shipped starting April 21.

About Stealing

Kit Crockett lives on a farm with her grief-stricken, widowed father, tending the garden, fishing in a local stream, and reading Nancy Drew mysteries from the library bookmobile. One day, Kit discovers a mysterious and beautiful woman has moved in just down the road.

Kit and the newcomer, Bella, become friends, and the lonely Kit draws comfort from her. But when a malicious neighbor finds out, Kit suddenly finds herself at the center of a tragic, fatal crime and becomes a ward of the court. Her Cherokee family wants to raise her, but the righteous Christians in town instead send her to a religious boarding school. Kit’s heritage is attacked, and she’s subjected to religious indoctrination and other forms of abuse. But Kit secretly keeps a journal recounting what she remembers–and revealing just what she has forgotten. Over the course of Stealing, she unravels the truth of how she ended up at the school and plots a way out. If only she can make her plan work in time.

In swift, sharp, and stunning prose, Margaret Verble spins a powerful coming-of-age tale and reaffirms her place as an indelible storyteller and chronicler of history.

“This powerful novel should join classics like Ernest J. Gaines’s The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Helena Maria Viramontes’s Under the Feet of Jesus, and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.” — New York Times Book Review

“Tender and eye-opening…Stealing is a masterclass in storytelling… Verble has harnessed the art of how to shoot straight to the heart of a story, and it is an experience not to be missed.” — Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Margaret Verble is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Her first novel, Maud’s Line, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her second novel, Cherokee America, has recently been listed by the New York Times as one of the 100 Notable Books of the Year for 2019. She lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

Oscar Hokeah is a citizen of Cherokee Nation and the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma from his mother’s side and has Mexican heritage through his father. He holds an MA in English with a concentration in Native American Literature from the University of Oklahoma, as well as a BFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), with a minor in Indigenous Liberal Studies. He is a recipient of the Truman Capote Scholarship Award through IAIA and is also a winner of the Native Writer Award through the Taos Summer Writers Conference. His short stories have been published in South Dakota Review, American Short Fiction, Yellow Medicine Review, Surreal South, and Red Ink Magazine. He works with Indian Child Welfare in Tahlequah.