"Very few writers can shift a narrative skillfully between centuries and negotiate an enemy language, tribal governments, and a slew of spirits while doing so. Very few can translate the soul of such a legacy into words and allow the shape of such a story to weave itself, like stomp dancers around the fire, naturally. LeAnne Howe has done it. Shell Shaker is an elegant, powerful, and knock-out story. 25 years later, I'm still blown away." - Joy Harjo, 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States 

"Rich with powerful Choctaw characters interlaced through time, culture, and heart, LeAnne Howe etches Oklahoma with such precision the reader can't help but transpose. It's absolute: Shell Shaker will always be necessary." — Oscar Hokeah, author of award-winning novel, Calling for a Blanket Dance 

"The rhythms in LeAnne Howe's writing take you into the deeper realities of Oklahoma. It takes a careful hand and an honest eye to manage a book so full of complex truth as Shell Shaker. Like creek water, cicada song, and red dust, Howe's careful prose could teach you some things about her corner of the world. If you listen closely it might also teach you some things about yourself." - Kim Shuck, 7th Poet Laureate of San Francisco Emerita

“A patriarchal narrative of colonization becomes unstrung and re-woven inside a masterstoryteller’s loom, in-order-to reclaim and heal through the trauma set within the ancestral landscape of the Choctaw People. Through words and song, and through ceremony, LeAnne Howe re/creates a memory map, connecting past to present, by expressing the matriarchal power within Indigenous voices. Twenty-five years later, LeAnne Howe’s threading within Shell Shaker continues to reverberate with beauty and strength as an intricate storyweaver for the land.” – Byron F. Aspaas, Navajo poet & essayist

“The literary influence of LeAnne Howe has touched so many writers who have come after her, and yet Shell Shaker remains so singular in its formal daring and electric characters. This story of violence, money, family, and transformation is governed by a kind of spirit logic that plunges deep into the past, skates between dimensions, and flows with the urgency of blood from a wound. Shell Shaker remains surprising and gutting, a remarkable novel.” - Elissa Washuta, author of White Magic