Where the Dead Sit Talking

Set in rural Oklahoma during the late 1980s, Where the Dead Sit Talking is a startling, authentically-voiced and lyrically-written Native American coming-of-age story With his single mother in jail, Sequoyah, a fifteen-year-old Cherokee boy, is placed in foster care with the Troutt family. Literally and figuratively scarred by his unstable upbringing, Sequoyah has spent years mostly keeping to himself, living with his emotions pressed deep below the surface?that is, until he meets seventeen-year-old Rosemary, another youth staying with the Troutts. Sequoyah and Rosemary bond over their shared Native American background and tumultuous paths through the foster care system, but as Sequoyah's feelings towards Rosemary deepen, the precariousness of their lives and the scars of their pasts threaten to undo them both.