History Book Festival to host online talk with Kelli Jo Ford Sept. 10
Kelli Jo Ford will join a live online discussion of her first book, “Crooked Hallelujah,” presented by the History Book Festival, at 5 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 10.
The novel follows four generations of Cherokee women across four decades. It begins in 1974 in Eastern Oklahoma’s Indian Country where 15-year-old Justine is growing up in a family of tough, complicated and loyal women, presided over by her mother Lula and Granny. Eventually, Justine and her daughter Reney move to Texas in the hope of finding a more stable life, but they struggle to survive in a world where unreliable men and natural forces such as wildfires and tornados threaten their connections to one another and their very ideas of home.
Ford is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Her fiction has appeared in several publications, including the Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Missouri Review. She has received a number of awards and fellowships, including Paris Review’s prestigious Plimpton Prize for her story “Hybrid Vigor,” published in the winter 2018 issue.
This Zoom event is free, but registration is required. For more information and to register, go to historybookfestival.org and click on 2020 Events.
The 2020 Virtual History Book Festival is presented in cooperation with the Lewes Public Library and sponsored by Delaware Humanities and the Lee Ann Wilkinson Group.
Biblion in Lewes and Browseabout Books in Rehoboth Beach carry copies of “Crooked Hallelujah” with signed archival bookplates. The festival encourages readers to support local independent bookstores. Copies also may be borrowed from the Lewes Public Library. To arrange for curbside pickup from the library, call 302-645-2733 or email lewes.library@gmail.com.
