“A masterful debut” that follows four generations of Cherokee women across four decades—from the Plimpton Prize–winning author (Sarah Jessica Parker). It’s 1974 in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and fifteen-year-old Justine grows up in a family of tough, complicated, and loyal women, presided over by her mother, Lula, and Granny. After Justine’s father abandoned the family, Lula became a devout member of the Holiness Church—a community that Justine at times finds stifling and terrifying. But Justine does her best as a devoted daughter, until an act of violence sends her on a different path forever. Crooked Hallelujah tells the stories of Justine—a mixed-blood Cherokee woman—and her daughter, Reney, as they move from Eastern Oklahoma’s Indian Country in the hopes of starting a new, more stable life in Texas amid the oil bust of the 1980s. However, life in Texas isn’t easy, and Reney feels unmoored from her family in Indian Country. Against the vivid backdrop of the Red River, we see their struggle to survive in a world—of unreliable men and near-Biblical natural forces, like wildfires and tornados—intent on stripping away their connections to one another and their very ideas of home. In lush and empathic prose, Kelli Jo Ford depicts what this family of proud, stubborn, Cherokee women sacrifices for those they love, amid larger forces of history, religion, class, and culture. This is a big-hearted and ambitious novel of the powerful bonds between mothers and daughters by an exquisite and rare new talent. “A compelling journey through the evolving terrain of multiple generations of women.” —The Washington Post

In 1884, when Laura, Manly, and their daughter Rose come from South Dakota to Mansfield, Missouri, looking for a better life, Laura's outspoken articles against a local timberman cause some problems.

"[The Doloriad] just might be what your rotten little heart deserves." —J. Robert Lennon, The New York Times Book Review Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by i-D, Cosmopolitan, Thrillist, Lit Reactor, and Lit Hub, and one of Nylon's March 2022 Books to Add to Your Reading List Macabre, provocative, depraved, and unforgettable, The Doloriad marks the debut of Missouri Williams, a terrifyingly original new voice In the wake of a mysterious environmental cataclysm that has wiped out the rest of humankind, the Matriarch, her brother, and the family descended from their incest cling to existence on the edges of a deserted city. The Matriarch, ruling with fear and force, dreams of starting humanity over again, though her children are not so certain. Together the family scavenges supplies and attempts to cultivate the poisoned earth. For entertainment, they watch old VHS tapes of a TV show in which a problem-solving medieval saint faces down a sequence of logical and ethical dilemmas. But one day the Matriarch dreams of another group of survivors and sends away one of her daughters, the legless Dolores, as a marriage offering. When Dolores returns the next day, her reappearance triggers the breakdown of the Matriarch’s fragile order, and the control she wields over their sprawling family begins to weaken. Told in extraordinary, intricate prose that moves with a life of its own, and at times striking with the power of physical force, Missouri Williams’s debut novel is a blazingly original document of depravity and salvation. Gothic and strange, moving and disquieting, and often hilarious, The Doloriad stares down, with narrowed eyes, humanity’s unbreakable commitment to life.

As a key to understanding the meaning of slavery in America, the Missouri controversy of 181921 is probably our most valuable text. The heat of sectional rhetoric during the Missouri debates reached a level never exceeded, and rarely matched, until the secession crisis of 1860. Moreover, nearly all the arguments for and against slavery in Americ...

Many of North America’s most beloved regions are artfully celebrated in these boardbooks designed to soothe children before bedtime while instilling an early appreciation for the continent’s natural and cultural wonders. Each book stars a multicultural group of people visiting the featured area’s attractions—such as the Rocky Mountains in Denver, the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, Lake Ontario in Toronto, and volcanoes in Hawaii. Rhythmic language guides children through the passage of both a single day and the four seasons while saluting the iconic aspects of each place. The Mississippi River, the Gateway Arch, the Ozarks, and Route 66 are some of the places and features highlighted in this board book of all things Missouri.

Vantage was chosen by Sharon Olds from nearly 1000 manuscripts as the winner of the 2019 APR/Honickman First Book Prize.

This new historical overview tells the dramatic story of the American West from its prehistory to the present. A narrative history, it covers the region from the North Dakota-to-Texas states to the Pacific Coast and includes experiences and contributions of American Indians, Hispanics, and African Americans.

In a powerful Civil War epic coursing with raw human drama, award-winning author and master historian Jim R. Woolard forges a young man’s harrowing coming-of-age journey from Confederate captive to Union prisoner to unchained force of vengeance during the most controversial episode in American history… Autumn, 1864. Rebel bushwhackers have seized and looted a small town in Missouri. Wounded and left for dead by his half-brother, seventeen-year-old Owen Wainwright is captured and conscripted by the Confederate Army. As the troops’ blacksmith, he witnesses the horrors of war firsthand: the savagery of General Selby’s Iron Brigade, the massacres of Union troops, the bloody battles at Lexington, Westport, and Mine Creek. Against all odds, Owen survives with the help of an unlikely ally—a new friend in arms and the only person he trusts. But if fate is cruel, war can be crueler . . . Caught in the crossfire of a deadly Yankee ambush, Owen is arrested and jailed in a Union prison. Beaten and brutalized by guards, he begins to give up hope—until a U.S. marshal comes to him with an unusual offer. Owen’s traitorous half-brother is wanted for murder. If Owen agrees to help the U.S. marshal infiltrate the Texas winter camp of Confederate guerillas—and bring his brother to justice—Owen will have both his freedom and his revenge. But the risks are great. The price of getting caught is death.

In Feeling as a Foreign Language, Alice Fulton considers poetry's uncanny ability to access and recreate emotions so wayward they go unnamed. Fulton contemplates topics ranging from the intricacies of a rare genetic syndrome to fractals from the aesthetics of complexity theory to the need for "cultural incorrectness." Along the way, she falls in love with an outrageous 17th century poet, argues for a Dickinsonian tradition in American letters, and calls for a courageous poetics of inconvenient knowledge.

After fire destroyed Missouri's capitol in 1911, voters approved a bond issue to construct a new statehouse. The tax to pay the bonds produced a one-million-dollar surplus, leaving a vast amount of money to decorate the new building. A special commission of art-minded Missourians employed some of the nation's leading painters and sculptors to create powerful and often huge pieces of art to adorn Missouri's most important new structure. The art of the Missouri capitol was considered among the finest to adorn any state capitol. But the passage of time has lessened recognition of the pieces and their creators. Most people--even those daily wandering the marble halls--have little knowledge of the significance of the art and the history it portrays. Bob Priddy and Jeffrey Ball return the capitol's decorations to prominence in The Art of the Missouri Capitol: History in Canvas, Bronze, and Stone. The book tells the many stories behind the art: the rigors of its creation, the political roadblocks that endangered the decoration program, and the triumph of the commissioners who devoted more than ten years to the project. The Art of the Missouri Capitol presents the art in 270 images, many by Lloyd Grotjan, mostly of the building's many compelling paintings, murals, and sculptures. Priddy, a journalist who has covered the Missouri legislature for more than three decades, and Ball, an art historian, use a wealth of historical materials to connect the grand design of the capitol decorations with accounts of sometimes temperamental artists and meddling politicians. The authors provide historical and artistic context to explain the many surprising, controversial choices the artists made, and they use Missouri history to explain the tales depicted in the artwork, revealing the events--and inaccuracies--that the paintings bring to life. The authors honor the Missouri capitol's artistic excellence in a way that will appeal to art enthusiasts and history buffs as well as to general readers. The Art of the Missouri Capitol: History in Canvas, Bronze, and Stone is the definitive account of the art's creation, of the men who produced it, and of the Missourians who lived the history that inspired it.