2 3/4 stars
I was fascinated when I began reading this tale of strong yet disadvantaged poor women with Native American heritage in a family that undergoes many travails through the years. The author really does a good job with immersing the reader in her settings, both Oklahoma and Texas. The characters are strongly portrayed and their interactions with each other and those around them fascinating.

As things moved along, however, the jumps in time and disparate stories that seemed rather jumbled up in a hodgepodge fashion created a sense of annoyance and impatience within as I waited for the story to get back to the main characters and to find out what happened with one situation or another that just seemed to abruptly end. There often didn't seem to be any transition from one chapter to the next. I am sure that sense was exacerbated by the format, which I realize was an uncorrected proof so I assume that the final version will not look quite so choppy.

I just did not feel the connection between some of the characters and stories, although I did appreciate the bond that the mothers and daughters and grandmother had throughout. That was very touching and heartwarming.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Grove Atlantic, and the author for giving me the opportunity to read the eARC ahead of publication, which is set for July 14, 2020. I'm glad I read it in the end.

This story follows four generations of Cherokee women as they do their best to navigate the hand they’ve been dealt in life. They struggle with poverty, identity, religion, substance abuse and teenage pregnancy. Set in Oklahoma and Texas, the reader gets a glimpse into the inequalities that these women face as they each seem to have a vice.

Kelli Jo Ford creates a diverse cast of strong women in her novel as we see Lula, Justine and Reney try to pave their own way in the world. Ford explores the themes of survival and faith as the women survive tornadoes and abusive partners. The novel started off strong for me but started to lose steam as the story started to lack cohesiveness between characters and storylines. It became difficult to follow as there would be random side stories thrown in about other people who lived in their town with no connection to the main plot. The writing style was very matter of fact with no frills but I kind of liked it because it gave a clear picture of the way the characters were living. I enjoyed Justine’s part and Reney’s narrativeon, but found the novel lacked focus as a whole.

Crooked Hallelujah is a short-ish collection of linked stories about the inheritance and relationships between a mother, daughter, and granddaughter in a mixed-race Cherokee, sometimes-Holy Roller family in rural Oklahoma and Texas. The writing and characterizations in Kelli Jo Ford's debut are almost always vivid; I got a distinct sense of place and culture, as well as of the three women, who are so distinct in many ways and yet so similar. The women's similarities are most striking in how they all struggle with the push-pull of love (to men and mothers) and independence (dedication to art, to partying, to the search for self).

The stories don't have much in the way of a traditional plot structure. Instead, they rush in circles, toward husbands and away from husbands, to home and toward the open road and back. The lack of plot never felt like a problem, though. Tension arises from the force of the attraction-repulsion between the characters. I was compelled to read on from wondering what will happen to 15-year-old Justine, after she gives birth, and, later, whether her daughter, Reney, will ever leave the DQ and her disappointing husband. Similarly compelling are the details of Holy Roller culture and the maps of these specific Indigenous lives (so rare and exciting to see in mainstream literature!). 

Some reviewers have mentioned finding the stories depressing. That wasn't really my experience. I think if you accept that real life is arbitrarily hard on lots of people, it's no surprise to encounter difficult events (teen pregnancies, domestic violence, sexual assault, money troubles) on the page. But Ford doesn't go into gruesome details with these hardships. Her characters take trouble for granted, focusing instead on what happens afterwards--what to do in the wake of the rape, or when eviction is looming. 

All of that said, the collection isn't perfect. The two stories not from the matrilineal characters' perspectives felt distracting, and one of them, about a neighbor is just bad. (I skipped most of the story once I saw that the two gay characters--the only ones in the book--get attacked. Just, why?) The final story, which takes place in a sort of fantasy, post-apocalypse, was also pretty unsatisfying. I don't know if it was the abrupt switch from realism to magical realism, or the many missing years between that story and the previous one, but I couldn't fully believe what was happening in it. This meant that the important mother-daughter reconciliation that happens at its end fell flat.

Still, the parts of the collection that are good are SO good that it's well worth reading. It makes me excited, too, to see what this author does next.

3.75 stars / This review will be posted at BookwormishMe.com on 7 July 2020 . 


Justine is a 15 year old Cherokee, living in Oklahoma with her mama and her grandmother. While her family does belong to the local Bible church, known by the townfolk as the holy rollers, Justine doesn’t feel like she fits in. She doesn’t want to be a holy roller. She wants to be a typical 15 year old, wearing jeans and hanging out with boys.

So one night she sneaks out and changes the course of her life forever. 

Crooked Hallelujah follows Justine from the 1970s into the 2000s. Through marriages and failures, accepting her past and future, raising a child, being part of her community of women. Through Justine and her daughter Reney’s eyes, we learn what life has been like and continues to be for the Cherokee nation and these women. 

Initially, I didn’t think I would like this book at all. It was a tough read and I struggled to even like the characters. As I continued to read, I began to understand Justine’s, Lula’s and Reney’s struggles with who they are and what to make of their lives. I ended up being entranced by Ford’s storytelling and writing.

DNF

This is just one of those times when I didn't connect with the writing style. Its long, descriptive paragraphs made the story hard to follow and the characters hard to relate to. What I understood, I liked, but I don't want to keep reading a book that I'm only understanding 15% of at any given time. I also felt like the stories were too disjointed, like none of them ever really ended in any way, and it was frustrating to read. I ended up deciding that I wouldn't get attached to any character, as I would get no closure for their stories.

I received a complimentary copy of Crooked Hallelujah from NetGalley.  Opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.

Oh man!  This novel was super depressing.  There was only one bright spot--one girl who got out and broke the cycle.  I am hoping this was entirely fiction, because the living situations of this family of women ranged from highly unpleasant to downright awful.  Warning: The point-of-view and time period change without much indication--at one point even jumping to a neighboring adolescent with possible mental retardation and a same sex couple who, I can only assume, live in the same town.  (There was no resolution for the aggressive plot of those three characters, by the way.)

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

I was so excited to read this, and of course, it did not disappoint!

This story, written by a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, follows two Cherokee women—Justine, who gets pregnant at fifteen, and her daughter, Reney—as they both grow up, move away from, and return to, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. The book is structured so that each chapter either follows Justine, Reney, or a handful of other characters that surround their lives. Ford's writing is really heartfelt, and while it is not overly descriptive, I was really touched by moments of intense love between Justine, Reney, and their family members. This is a story that will tug at your heartstrings and really connect you to a lineage of strong women.

I really enjoyed getting to know individuals in the communities Justine and Reney inhabited, even if it did move the focus away from their narrative. It helped to flesh out the arid, hard-scrabble environment in which they lived. However, I do think a few of the stories that we follow end very suddenly, or were hard for me to connect to the overall storyline (such as the brief section about Justine's father-in-law). Ford also writes evocatively of the landscape, which comes to life as a character in its own right. Nature plays such a huge role in the story, both in how it helps define family and home, and how it affects Justine & Reney’s life in more obvious ways. I found this story to be a beautiful, heartfelt exploration of what it means to be a Native person today, exploring tradition, family, and the bond with the environment.

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. 

Interesting novel about a native American family who are part of a holiness church.  Once a family member decides to leave, it changes the family dynamic.

"Crooked Hallelujah" a novel-in-stories about four generations of women in one Cherokee family. Set in Oklahoma and Texas, the women - Granny, Lula, Justine, and Reney - battle each other, God, the men in their lives, and the elements.
I appreciated the insight author Kelli Jo Ford gives to her female characters. These four women are both strong and weak, and it takes them a lifetime to really discover who they are. who they want to be and how they want to interact with each other.
The book is often confusing and annoying, though. The narrator changes character in several places, and it took me awhile each time to figure out who was talking. The author backtracks often, too, which left me feeling confused and annoyed. There are also several plotlines that are abandoned and probably should have been edited out. I also didn't think that men should be included as narrators since this book is supposed to be about the women.
Despite the flaws, I didn't want to put down this book. Something about it kept my attention. Maybe it was the strict church or the complicated generational relationships. Either way, I probably would not recommend this book, but it did provide a good reading experience.
Note: this novel does include physical, emotional and spiritual abuse, profanity and sexual content.

I found this book to be very confusing.  While I understand that the subject matter is the lives of present day American Indians, I had a difficult time finding any cohesive plot.  The writing did not hold my interest at all.  The plot seemed to shift between the lives of several different family members in a way that i could not follow.  I did not find this book to be interesting.

The description for this book sounded amazing. I had super high hopes for this book. Unfortunately, I feel like it fell a bit flat from what I wanted it to be. 

The book jumps through various time periods, which is understandable. We're reading the story of several generations of women here and so it makes sense that in order to get to know all of them, we have to go to different periods of their lives. But the problem is that we're generally not told what time period we're in. We're not given a "1974" at the top of a chapter/page, or a "28-year-old Justine..." or something to help set the time for us. We jump from Justine as a teen to Reney as a teen to Reney as an adult or a child, and there's no rhyme or reason given to help it make sense or bring it all together. 

There are also some loose ends that don't seem to get wrapped up. I still have a few pages to go, but there's a scene early on where Mose comes to help Stevie and Marni when something really bad happens, and he's sent to phone for help. And then... that's it. He goes, and when we cut away from him, we never see him again. Did he find help? Were they all okay? I feel like I'm asking how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop... I may never know. 

I also feel as if there are some gaps that are bigger than they should be. We're shown clear signs of tension and trouble in the relationships between these women, but in some aspects, it feels like there's far more tension and trouble than there should be based on what we see. Like it feels like there's much more happening off-stage, so to speak, that would explain how these relationships ended up here - but we're not being given any of that off-stage info - and that's not fair to the reader. 

I'm hoping that maybe there will be something in these final few pages that will bring everything together, satisfy my longing for loose ends to be tied up and gain some real satisfaction with how it all turns out. But I'm afraid this hope may end up being dashed like my hope that this would be such a good book.

Updated: I finished the book. I was bitterly disappointed. For the first dozen or so paragraphs of the last pages, I wasn't even sure who the narrator was. It wasn't until there was finally a mention of Lula that I understood who it was. The leap forward into the "near future" made no real sense. I didn't understand what was happening or why. 

I realize this is an advance copy, but this entire book has a very unfinished feel to me. Too many loose ends left dangling, too many confusing narration changes, no cohesive plot beyond that it's following mothers and daughters. The description offered lots of promise but the book didn't follow through.

This is a touching multi-perspective novel about four generations of Cherokee women grappling with hardships, poverty, alcoholism, and relating to each other. Each woman's story is able to differentiate the characters from one another. The flow, however, from one chapter to the next could have been more smooth. What is clear from the story is that generational economic inequity and how women are treated by society impact the individual lives of the characters. I look forward to seeing the next novel by Kelli Jo Ford.

This book has so many beautiful descriptions of characters and the world they inhabit.  The matriarch of the family provides  a voice of love and support between her daughter,  a strict follower of the religious community they belong to , and her granddaughter who is trying to figure out where she fits in the world.  Reney  has that one familial compass with whom she tries to navigate her world.  Once her grandmother has passed she has to rely on hard lessons she learns as she moves through the rest of her life.  At times in the book the transitions from both location and character can seem disjointed.

I was intrigued by the premise of this story concerning four generations of Cherokee women.  It’s a character study, showing us how each generation struggles to get by, how no one’s dreams play out.  The men in their lives are nothing but disappointments, “sorry choices” as Justine calls them.    
I found the prose dry as dirt.   And I had trouble feeling like I got to know any of the women.  It’s a slow moving book but at the same time it jumps around in time.  It just felt disjointed. You’re given glimpses into each woman’s life, but no cohesive story.    It’s also a very depressing book.  
And as for the main reason I chose to read this book, that it concerned Indian women, well, there is no sense of identity or heritage here.  All you see is their poverty.  
Overall, this was a big disappointment.  
My thanks to netgalley and Grove Atlantic for an advance copy of this book.

All the elements of this book individually are great. The characters are strong, interesting and complex, the prose is compelling and the speculative storyline is believable, but they just don’t create a cohesive whole. The Crooked Hallelujah primarily focuses on the story of a Cherokee mother and daughter. These two women are interesting to read about, but the book occasionally breaks away from them which is distracting. I found myself wondering how everything was going to tie together when this happened. The first three-fourths of the book read like literary fiction and the last fourth like another genre completely.  The last fourth was good but it just felt a little rushed and a little too out of the blue. It would have been nice if the speculative fiction aspect of the book been more prominent or been woven throughout.
Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for giving me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review 

. #CrookedHallelujah #NetGalley

I enjoyed this debut book about generations of Cherokee women and their lives in Oklahoma and Texas. The multiple POVs were hard to follow at times, but I loved the complex mother/daughter relationships and strong women in this book.

Ford's debut is an immersive plunge into the lives of four generations of Cherokee women in Oklahoma and Texas. With an ongoing theme of abandonment by unreliable men in the family, Ford's mothers and daughters survive with willful tenacity and struggle through family relationship conflicts. The characters are fleshed out through a series of more-or-less chronological linked stories, with varying narrative perspectives giving us insight into each woman's life. Lula holds fast to her Christian fundamentalist faith, while her daughter Justine falls from grace with her teenage pregnancy. That baby in turn becomes the one who flies farthest from the nest, giving us a removed perspective on the family dynamics. A couple of the stories involve more peripheral characters and don't quite gel with the book as a whole, and the final section, taking place in the near future, introduces some rather bizarre apocalyptic elements apparently related to climate change and violent weather. Nevertheless, this exploration of a family and culture enchants us with its evocation of matrilineal bonds.

Crooked Hallelujah is a complex book, with a nonlinear narrative and multiple perspectives. At the heart of the novel are Justine and her daughter Reney. Justine is a half-Cherokee woman, searching for the stability that wasn’t available in her childhood. Justine’s father left when she was a child, and her mother, Lula, brought the family back to her mother’s home and the fundamentalist Holiness Church. The novel covers Justine’s life from pregnancy to old age, in an episodic fashion. Narration is provided by Justine, Lula, Reney, Granny, and other members of Justine’s extended family. 

This is a difficult book, both in structure and in content. I found that I could only read the book in relatively short doses, or I would end up in a bad mood. For me, that speaks to how well Kelli Jo Ford conveys the stress and difficulties her characters are faced with, even if I don’t enjoy the outcome for myself. The narrator is not specified at the beginning of chapter breaks, and there is no consistent “tell” for when it will change or who will pick up the narration. With the exception of the first and final few episodes in the book, it can be difficult to piece together the timeline until after you have finished the entire work. While I don’t recommend this as a beach read, if you’re looking for a new author or a powerful #ownvoices story and willing to put in the effort, this is definitely one to consider. 

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley for an honest review.

Even if I think it's well written I found hard to read it as sometimes it seemed disjointed.
Not my cup of tea.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

This book is about several generations of women and their relationships with each other.

It had a promising start but somewhere along the way became repetitive.   The characters were strong women,  which I enjoyed.  The plot is told from a multitude of perspectives and becomes difficult to follow  

There were several segments of the book that didn't  really fit.  Out of the blue, several characters are introduced.  Their stories weren't really relevant or complete.   The part with Mosely and his 2 female neighbors comes to mind.

I was given an ARC. I am leaving my honest review.