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Kind of Kin
A richly comic yet heartfelt novel about people who want to do right and still do wrong, and people who do right in spite of themselves, as they try to help, protect, and provide for those they love most when a draconian new state law threatens an ordinary American family and throws a close-knit community into turmoil.
All of Cedar, Oklahoma, is shocked when Bible-believing Bob Brown and his friend, Pastor Jesus Garcia, are tossed in the county jail for hiding a barn-full of Mexicans. Thanks to an ambitious blonde state legislator and her politically shrewd husband, it's a felony to harbor an undocumented immigrant in the Sooner State.
It's bad enough that her Christian daddy is a felon, but now John Brown refuses to defend himself, creating a mess of trouble for his daughter, Sweet. She's got enough on her hands caring for her husband's bedridden elderly great-grandfather, and trying to keep her son, Carl Albert in line. Now, she's got her ten-year-old nephew Dustin to worry about, too. A quiet and thoughtful boy, Dustin hasn't had it easy. His mother is dead, his older sister Misty Dawn is looking for her recently deported husband, and Carl Albert beats up on him. Sweet is trying to hold it all together, but the more she tries to fix things, the faster her life unravels. When Dustin disappears and Misty Dawn shows up with needs of her own, Sweet's sense of guilt and responsibility drive her to desperate actions that test her family, friends, and neighbors in unexpected and revealing ways.
A story of self-serving lawmakers and complicated lawbreakers, Christian principle and political scapegoating, Rilla Askew's funny and poignant novel explores what happens when upstanding people are pushed too far-and how an ad-hoc family, and ultimately, an entire town, will unite to protect its own.
All of Cedar, Oklahoma, is shocked when Bible-believing Bob Brown and his friend, Pastor Jesus Garcia, are tossed in the county jail for hiding a barn-full of Mexicans. Thanks to an ambitious blonde state legislator and her politically shrewd husband, it's a felony to harbor an undocumented immigrant in the Sooner State.
It's bad enough that her Christian daddy is a felon, but now John Brown refuses to defend himself, creating a mess of trouble for his daughter, Sweet. She's got enough on her hands caring for her husband's bedridden elderly great-grandfather, and trying to keep her son, Carl Albert in line. Now, she's got her ten-year-old nephew Dustin to worry about, too. A quiet and thoughtful boy, Dustin hasn't had it easy. His mother is dead, his older sister Misty Dawn is looking for her recently deported husband, and Carl Albert beats up on him. Sweet is trying to hold it all together, but the more she tries to fix things, the faster her life unravels. When Dustin disappears and Misty Dawn shows up with needs of her own, Sweet's sense of guilt and responsibility drive her to desperate actions that test her family, friends, and neighbors in unexpected and revealing ways.
A story of self-serving lawmakers and complicated lawbreakers, Christian principle and political scapegoating, Rilla Askew's funny and poignant novel explores what happens when upstanding people are pushed too far-and how an ad-hoc family, and ultimately, an entire town, will unite to protect its own.
417 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
79 people are currently reading
1507 people want to read
About the author
Rilla Askew
14 books129 followersRilla Askew's newest novel, PRIZE FOR THE FIRE, is about the 16th century English martyr Anne Askew. Rilla Askew received a 2009 Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her first novel, THE MERCY SEAT, was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Dublin IMPAC Prize, was a Boston Globe Notable Book, and received the Oklahoma Book Award and the Western Heritage Award in 1998. Her acclaimed novel about the Tulsa Race Massacre, FIRE IN BEULAH, received the American Book Award and the Myers Book Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights. She was a 2004 fellow at Civiella Ranieri in Umbertide, Italy, and in 2008 her novel HARPSONG received the Oklahoma Book Award, the Western Heritage Award, the WILLA Award from Women Writing the West, and the Violet Crown Award from the Writers League of Texas. Askew received the 2011 Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oklahoma Center for the Book. Her novel KIND OF KIN deals with state immigration laws and was a finalist for the Western Spur Award, the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, and was long-listed for the Dublin IMPAC Prize. Her most recent book is a collection of creative nonfiction MOST AMERICAN: Notes From A Wounded Place. Kirkus Reviews calls Most American "An eloquently thoughtful memoir in essays." In nine linked works of creative nonfiction, Askew spotlights the complex history of her home state. From the Trail of Tears to the Tulsa Race Riot to the Murrah Federal Building bombing, Oklahoma appears as a microcosm of our national saga. Yet no matter our location, Askew argues, we must own the whole truth of our history if the wounds of division that separate us are ever to heal.
"Five generations of Rilla Askew's family have occupied southeastern Oklahoma. Celebrating this birthright, she has concocted of it her own Faulknerian kingdom. Askew is writing a mythic cycle, novels and stories that unsettle our view of the West's settling. In a continuous fictional mural populated with hardscrabble souls - credible, noble and flawed - Askew is completing the uncompleted crossing of the plains. Trusting prose that is disciplined, luxuriant and muscular, she is forging a chronicle as humane as it is elemental."
Allan Gurganus
May 20, 2009
American Academy of Arts and Letters
"Five generations of Rilla Askew's family have occupied southeastern Oklahoma. Celebrating this birthright, she has concocted of it her own Faulknerian kingdom. Askew is writing a mythic cycle, novels and stories that unsettle our view of the West's settling. In a continuous fictional mural populated with hardscrabble souls - credible, noble and flawed - Askew is completing the uncompleted crossing of the plains. Trusting prose that is disciplined, luxuriant and muscular, she is forging a chronicle as humane as it is elemental."
Allan Gurganus
May 20, 2009
American Academy of Arts and Letters
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 213 reviews
October 23, 2012
I am a reader that prefers depth to breadth. I want to be pierced. I want the universal and the personal to eat each other’s tails, to turn into an infinity sign. For this reason, I am sometimes not satisfied with fiction that takes a broad scope. Often what you get is wide but not deep, more sociology than fiction. Rilla Askew knows how to avoid this pitfall. Kind of Kin is deep AND wide—a big, multivocal book, full of characters who all seem like people I talk to everyday, real as real. Set in contemporary southeast Oklahoma where an anti-immigration law is creating crises for some and opportunities for others, Kind of Kin is full of characters who care to be good people, who try to understand their world and each other, who define honor for themselves on-the-fly and to their own surprise, who figure things out as they go along. The novel weaves together several characters’ lives, connecting them to a bigger, national picture, but it is a story about family, and home, and about the deeply personal moral decisions that people are forced to make in response to situations that they didn’t create and wouldn’t have chosen. It’s a crackling read, exciting from the get-go, deep and wide, lively and contemporary while also carrying the deeper rhythms of older stories, fundamental conflicts. Up until now, I would have put “The Immigrant Song” by Led Zeppelin at the top of my very short list of texts that deal with the pain and raw power that surround the issue of immigration. But I’m moving Kind of Kin to the top. That’s right, Rilla Askew beats Led Zeppelin.
Kind of Kin
September 3, 2020
interesting novel but took ages to get going going though but source subject matter still topical in the states though
November 12, 2013
Rilla Askew’s new novel, “Kind of Kin,” sneaks over the border of literary fiction to make a case for more compassion in the immigration debate. It’s a timely argument, of course. Even while Mitt Romney was blaming his loss on President Obama’s “gifts,” Republicans agreed that their party must develop a better attitude toward Hispanic voters — current and future. As if to show the way, “Kind of Kin” spotlights a single American family dragged toward social enlightenment.
Askew, who has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, specializes in broad family dramas that often reflect dark corners of our nation’s racial geography. Her first novel, “The Mercy Seat” (1997), is a Cain-and-Abel tale set in Oklahoma’s Indian Territory. “Fire in Beulah” (2001) takes place around the Tulsa race riots of 1921. “Kind of Kin” is lighter than those books, but it’s also more polemical.
The story rotates through several points of view, allowing the focus to shift from intimate moments in a country kitchen to policy debates in the national news. Over a period of three weeks in early 2008, a harried wife and mother named Sweet Kirkendall is thrown into a crisis that reorders her life. As the novel opens in Cedar, Okla., population 581, Sweet’s born-again father has been arrested for harboring 14 illegal immigrants in his barn. Offered a chance for bail, he refuses to enter a plea and insists on being a martyr in the fight against a strict new immigration law. “Don’t worry,” he tells Sweet. “All things work together for good to them that love God.” He may know his New Testament, but he doesn’t know what he’s doing to his daughter. His righteous stand not only baffles Sweet but dumps his orphaned grandson, Dustin, on her doorstep. With her husband off working on a gas pipeline, she’s frantic to get her dad out of jail while caring for a bedridden relative at home and trying to keep her son and 10-year-old Dustin from “fighting like heathens.” No wonder she “hadn’t slept a drop.”
These opening chapters are tremendously engaging as Askew whips up chance encounters, misunderstandings and arguments into a rolling tangle of complications. Sweet’s family is torn apart by zealots on both sides of the immigration debate. Her father knows that Jesus wants us to welcome all strangers; her husband is just as sure that these undocumented, low-wage workers are spreading like “fire ants swarming up from Texas.” And in the lives of frightened, enterprising immigrants, we can see the human cost of laws that separate parents, create an underground economy and put poor people at constant risk of exploitation.
It’s also refreshing to see devout Christians led by prayer to act as radical advocates for social justice, instead of their usual role in the liberal imagination as homophobic, child-abusing, gun-toting bigots. (How quickly the Left forgot the church’s role in the civil rights movement.)
But otherwise, “Kind of Kin” is kind of obvious. Much of the story takes place in a fit of domestic hysteria, as though this were a bedroom farce about immigration policy. That disconnect between the novel’s subject and its antic tone begins to grate as the story moves along. Sweet is sympathetic, but the more she carries on with her deep-fat-fried anxieties and her needle-pointed theology, the less interesting she seems. There’s lots of hand-wringing as she adds “another little Lincoln log of guilt” to the long list of her failings. I couldn’t wait for her to emigrate from the 1950s into the modern age.
And yet Sweet is a model of subtlety compared with the anti-
immigrant villains in “Kind of Kin.” First, there’s Sheriff Arvin Holloway, a blusterin’, sputterin’, short-
tempered racist who seems to have wandered out of “Smokey and the Bandit.” He presides over a long, dull confrontation that gobbles up almost a quarter of the novel. And then there’s state Rep. Monica Moorehouse, who’s plotting her march to Washington on the backs of jailed Mexicans. In a series of publicity-hogging announcements, she promotes a plan to move way beyond “self-deportation” and make America as toxic as possible to Mexican workers. We know such cynical political operatives exist — we’ve seen Michele Bachmann in action — but Moorehouse is one of those caricatures meant simply to reassure left-wing folks that they really don’t have anything to learn from people on the right. She darts around the state in her Escalade looking for Mexicans to condemn and cameras to broadcast her doing it. Her only real friend is her hairdresser, who, of course, is gay and, of course, dotes on a small dog.
Some relief from these worn stereotypes comes from chapters narrated by Sweet’s little nephew, Dustin, who’s already suffered the death of his mother and now must figure out why his grandfather wants to stay in jail. He’s a kind boy with a fresh, gentle voice. When he finds a Mexican man who escaped arrest on his grandfather’s farm, the two of them set off on an ill-defined road trip that becomes a national media obsession.
The book’s finest element may be how beautifully Askew represents the fractured English and Spanish that Dustin and his new immigrant friend use to communicate with each other:
“¿Where is this town?”
“I don’t know. Is possible I can say to some person to tell me.”
“¡No! Please. If they know I am here it will go badly for me. For my sons also.”
“I don’t speak nothing, no problem. . . . Tomorrow I bring more food. If I am able. Is difficult. My aunt and my uncle . . . they are living me when my grandfather . . . while my grandfather . . . I don’t know the words. The . . . police take him.”
It’s a graceful method that allows us to read what each of them hears in his own language, without the interruption of parenthetical translations.
Alas, all the ingredients are here for an updated version of T.C. Boyle’s classic novel about immigration, “Tortilla Curtain,” but with its faithful Mexicans praying to the Virgin Mary and its villainous conservatives playing to racist voters, “Kind of Kin” sounds as nuanced as a campaign ad. Hearts and minds are changed within this story, but it’s hard to imagine any being changed by it in the real world.
Askew, who has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, specializes in broad family dramas that often reflect dark corners of our nation’s racial geography. Her first novel, “The Mercy Seat” (1997), is a Cain-and-Abel tale set in Oklahoma’s Indian Territory. “Fire in Beulah” (2001) takes place around the Tulsa race riots of 1921. “Kind of Kin” is lighter than those books, but it’s also more polemical.
The story rotates through several points of view, allowing the focus to shift from intimate moments in a country kitchen to policy debates in the national news. Over a period of three weeks in early 2008, a harried wife and mother named Sweet Kirkendall is thrown into a crisis that reorders her life. As the novel opens in Cedar, Okla., population 581, Sweet’s born-again father has been arrested for harboring 14 illegal immigrants in his barn. Offered a chance for bail, he refuses to enter a plea and insists on being a martyr in the fight against a strict new immigration law. “Don’t worry,” he tells Sweet. “All things work together for good to them that love God.” He may know his New Testament, but he doesn’t know what he’s doing to his daughter. His righteous stand not only baffles Sweet but dumps his orphaned grandson, Dustin, on her doorstep. With her husband off working on a gas pipeline, she’s frantic to get her dad out of jail while caring for a bedridden relative at home and trying to keep her son and 10-year-old Dustin from “fighting like heathens.” No wonder she “hadn’t slept a drop.”
These opening chapters are tremendously engaging as Askew whips up chance encounters, misunderstandings and arguments into a rolling tangle of complications. Sweet’s family is torn apart by zealots on both sides of the immigration debate. Her father knows that Jesus wants us to welcome all strangers; her husband is just as sure that these undocumented, low-wage workers are spreading like “fire ants swarming up from Texas.” And in the lives of frightened, enterprising immigrants, we can see the human cost of laws that separate parents, create an underground economy and put poor people at constant risk of exploitation.
It’s also refreshing to see devout Christians led by prayer to act as radical advocates for social justice, instead of their usual role in the liberal imagination as homophobic, child-abusing, gun-toting bigots. (How quickly the Left forgot the church’s role in the civil rights movement.)
But otherwise, “Kind of Kin” is kind of obvious. Much of the story takes place in a fit of domestic hysteria, as though this were a bedroom farce about immigration policy. That disconnect between the novel’s subject and its antic tone begins to grate as the story moves along. Sweet is sympathetic, but the more she carries on with her deep-fat-fried anxieties and her needle-pointed theology, the less interesting she seems. There’s lots of hand-wringing as she adds “another little Lincoln log of guilt” to the long list of her failings. I couldn’t wait for her to emigrate from the 1950s into the modern age.
And yet Sweet is a model of subtlety compared with the anti-
immigrant villains in “Kind of Kin.” First, there’s Sheriff Arvin Holloway, a blusterin’, sputterin’, short-
tempered racist who seems to have wandered out of “Smokey and the Bandit.” He presides over a long, dull confrontation that gobbles up almost a quarter of the novel. And then there’s state Rep. Monica Moorehouse, who’s plotting her march to Washington on the backs of jailed Mexicans. In a series of publicity-hogging announcements, she promotes a plan to move way beyond “self-deportation” and make America as toxic as possible to Mexican workers. We know such cynical political operatives exist — we’ve seen Michele Bachmann in action — but Moorehouse is one of those caricatures meant simply to reassure left-wing folks that they really don’t have anything to learn from people on the right. She darts around the state in her Escalade looking for Mexicans to condemn and cameras to broadcast her doing it. Her only real friend is her hairdresser, who, of course, is gay and, of course, dotes on a small dog.
Some relief from these worn stereotypes comes from chapters narrated by Sweet’s little nephew, Dustin, who’s already suffered the death of his mother and now must figure out why his grandfather wants to stay in jail. He’s a kind boy with a fresh, gentle voice. When he finds a Mexican man who escaped arrest on his grandfather’s farm, the two of them set off on an ill-defined road trip that becomes a national media obsession.
The book’s finest element may be how beautifully Askew represents the fractured English and Spanish that Dustin and his new immigrant friend use to communicate with each other:
“¿Where is this town?”
“I don’t know. Is possible I can say to some person to tell me.”
“¡No! Please. If they know I am here it will go badly for me. For my sons also.”
“I don’t speak nothing, no problem. . . . Tomorrow I bring more food. If I am able. Is difficult. My aunt and my uncle . . . they are living me when my grandfather . . . while my grandfather . . . I don’t know the words. The . . . police take him.”
It’s a graceful method that allows us to read what each of them hears in his own language, without the interruption of parenthetical translations.
Alas, all the ingredients are here for an updated version of T.C. Boyle’s classic novel about immigration, “Tortilla Curtain,” but with its faithful Mexicans praying to the Virgin Mary and its villainous conservatives playing to racist voters, “Kind of Kin” sounds as nuanced as a campaign ad. Hearts and minds are changed within this story, but it’s hard to imagine any being changed by it in the real world.
Read
December 21, 2012"Rilla Askew’s fourth novel is a brilliant evocation of Heraclitus’s axiom that character is fate—an ironic evocation she both confirms and turns on its head." - Jim Drummond, Norman, Oklahoma
This book was reviewed in the January 2013 issue of World Literature Today. Read the full review by visiting our website: http://bit.ly/R7Unxp
This book was reviewed in the January 2013 issue of World Literature Today. Read the full review by visiting our website: http://bit.ly/R7Unxp
February 20, 2016
This was an outstanding book. Engaging, vividly written and thought-provoking. Kind of Kin is an all-around great read that bears keen social witness to a contentious issue of our day (the immigration debate). Rilla Askew handles the topic deftly, with sensitivity, humor, and conscience. A beautiful ending, to boot.
August 19, 2012
Askew writes a very compelling family drama that features a very hot subject these days--immigration, illegal and otherwise. Religion, civil rights, extended families, and the economic struggles of blue collar families all come into play in this multi-layered novel of life in Oklahoma.
January 19, 2015
*Check out http://www.infinitereads.com for other reviews and sundry thoughts!*
Oklahoma's best-kept secret is at it again, as Rilla Askew steps out of her usual historical fiction with Kind of Kin, a novel that touches on both the timeless theme of family bonds and the timely theme of illegal immigration regulation.
Bob Brown's arrest shocks the citizens of tiny Cedar, Okla. In Bob's estimation, he's "a felon because he's a Christian." In an exercise in radical discipleship, Bob agreed to hide a handful of frightened illegal Mexican immigrants in his barn, only to find himself betrayed to the law by someone close to him. In his absence, his daughter, Sweet, takes over the care of her orphaned nephew, Dustin, one more worry for her overtaxed nerves. Sweet's already dealing with a tight household budget, her husband Terry's bedridden great-grandpa, Terry's constant out of town trips for his job with the gas company and a son even she admits is turning into a bully. When Dustin runs away, Sweet finds herself in the middle of a media circus involving a rabidly ambitious state representative just as Dustin's older sister comes to her seeking shelter for her husband, an illegal alien who has returned to the U.S. after his deportation to Mexico. The center cannot hold, and Sweet's life spirals out of control--straight into a standoff involving a vicious sheriff and Sweet's pastor and church congregation.
Oklahomans will recognize the Sooner State on a deep level in Kind of Kin; this is much more than a few mentions of Oklahoma City's Penn Square Mall or the Choctaw Nation to set the scene. Vividly authentic, Askew's portrayal of small-town, working-class Oklahoma encompasses its gossipmongering and fear of the unknown without mockery, as well as renders its core values, tenacious spirit and bone-deep sense of hospitality without becoming trite or twee. Rather than make a simple political statement, Askew has crafted an uncannily real cast of characters whose attempts to go about their daily lives and care for their families intersect with issues of church and state, conservative versus liberal politics and the choice between the right way and the easy way. A winner for book clubs, Askew's foray into contemporary fiction is the perfect vehicle to introduce new readers to this talented and under-recognized voice. Her sensitive and humanizing treatment of this hot-button issue is sure to provoke thought and discussion no matter what readers' political leanings may be.
***This review originally appeared in Shelf Awareness. Sign up for this free and awesome newsletter at http://www.shelf-awareness.com for the latest news and reviews! This review refers to an ARC provided by Shelf Awareness.***
Oklahoma's best-kept secret is at it again, as Rilla Askew steps out of her usual historical fiction with Kind of Kin, a novel that touches on both the timeless theme of family bonds and the timely theme of illegal immigration regulation.
Bob Brown's arrest shocks the citizens of tiny Cedar, Okla. In Bob's estimation, he's "a felon because he's a Christian." In an exercise in radical discipleship, Bob agreed to hide a handful of frightened illegal Mexican immigrants in his barn, only to find himself betrayed to the law by someone close to him. In his absence, his daughter, Sweet, takes over the care of her orphaned nephew, Dustin, one more worry for her overtaxed nerves. Sweet's already dealing with a tight household budget, her husband Terry's bedridden great-grandpa, Terry's constant out of town trips for his job with the gas company and a son even she admits is turning into a bully. When Dustin runs away, Sweet finds herself in the middle of a media circus involving a rabidly ambitious state representative just as Dustin's older sister comes to her seeking shelter for her husband, an illegal alien who has returned to the U.S. after his deportation to Mexico. The center cannot hold, and Sweet's life spirals out of control--straight into a standoff involving a vicious sheriff and Sweet's pastor and church congregation.
Oklahomans will recognize the Sooner State on a deep level in Kind of Kin; this is much more than a few mentions of Oklahoma City's Penn Square Mall or the Choctaw Nation to set the scene. Vividly authentic, Askew's portrayal of small-town, working-class Oklahoma encompasses its gossipmongering and fear of the unknown without mockery, as well as renders its core values, tenacious spirit and bone-deep sense of hospitality without becoming trite or twee. Rather than make a simple political statement, Askew has crafted an uncannily real cast of characters whose attempts to go about their daily lives and care for their families intersect with issues of church and state, conservative versus liberal politics and the choice between the right way and the easy way. A winner for book clubs, Askew's foray into contemporary fiction is the perfect vehicle to introduce new readers to this talented and under-recognized voice. Her sensitive and humanizing treatment of this hot-button issue is sure to provoke thought and discussion no matter what readers' political leanings may be.
***This review originally appeared in Shelf Awareness. Sign up for this free and awesome newsletter at http://www.shelf-awareness.com for the latest news and reviews! This review refers to an ARC provided by Shelf Awareness.***
May 13, 2013
I have really mixed feelings about this one. It's got a lot going for it. It addresses an important, timely issue: How do we treat the "strangers"--illegal immigrants--among us? Once it gets going--and it doesn't take long--it's a real page-turner. And it takes religion--even evangelical religion--seriously as a motivation for doing right and pursuing justice. That's clear from the opening sentences: "'Your grandpa is a felon,' Aunt Sweet said. 'A felon and a Christian. He says he's a felon BECAUSE he's a Christian.'" And there a several compelling characters, especially "Aunt Sweet," though, unfortunately, we don't really get to know "grandpa" very well. Of the several intersecting stories, I found especially touching the story of the 10-year-old-grandson and the illegal Mexican immigrant who help each other cross Oklahoma by truck & bicycle. Luis, the Mexican, speaks no English, and the boy knows only a very little Spanish. (Luis's religious faith is also very compelling.) But they establish a beautiful, trusting relationship. The way the author conveys their communication is ingenious and affecting. So what's the problem? Well, while there are compelling characters on the side of justice, the villains are all cartoon characters, especially the sheriff, the reporter, and the ambitious legislator who's seeking to advance her own career on the backs of these immigrants. And, in fact, the whole tone of the novel felt cartoonish to me, undermining the seriousness of the story and the issue. (I'm astonished that only a couple of other GoodReads reviewers and one professional reviewer of the 7 that I read shared my view of this.) It's an OK novel that I think had the potential to be really, really good but did not fulfill that potential for me.
January 26, 2013
I received this book as a Goodreads Giveaway.
When I read the synopsis I thought it would be more than it was. The subject matter is controversial, but I don't think the book really did it justice. I think it could have been so much more. The book is over 400 pages, and was so light in content that I just wanted to skim over it, but I wanted to be fair to the author. I wanted some meat that I could sink my teeth into, and I just didn't get it.
Some of the characters were not well developed, and did not have a lot of depth, and only a couple of them were likeable. I also did not think some of the characters were unrealistic. The main character, Sweet, was just plain obnoxious, a pushover, and pathetic. Given the opportunity to address anything that mattered, she just WOULDN'T. Her young son was a bully, and she couldn't even stand up to him.
I am not from the south, nor do I presume to know how politics work, but I just can't picture some of the antics of officials tolerable ~ no matter where they are living.
All in all, the book was disappointing. The subject matter had the potential to be explosive, but it was a firecracker dud.
When I read the synopsis I thought it would be more than it was. The subject matter is controversial, but I don't think the book really did it justice. I think it could have been so much more. The book is over 400 pages, and was so light in content that I just wanted to skim over it, but I wanted to be fair to the author. I wanted some meat that I could sink my teeth into, and I just didn't get it.
Some of the characters were not well developed, and did not have a lot of depth, and only a couple of them were likeable. I also did not think some of the characters were unrealistic. The main character, Sweet, was just plain obnoxious, a pushover, and pathetic. Given the opportunity to address anything that mattered, she just WOULDN'T. Her young son was a bully, and she couldn't even stand up to him.
I am not from the south, nor do I presume to know how politics work, but I just can't picture some of the antics of officials tolerable ~ no matter where they are living.
All in all, the book was disappointing. The subject matter had the potential to be explosive, but it was a firecracker dud.
January 6, 2013
This is a very unusual book with the primary themes of religion, politics and societal values. The author keeps your interest while juggling multiple stories and shows that what is legal and what is right are not always the same. The major issue is the arrest of a Christian grandfather, Robert John Brown, who was sheltering a group of illegal immigrants in his barn. This is the beginning, but it is only the first domino to fall in a whole series of chains. The message that I took away from this tale is that we all make choices and we should make positive choices. Choose to be for something or someone not against, kind of a glass half full way of living life.
October 16, 2013
The text of House Bill 1804 or, to give it its proper name, the ‘Oklahoma Taxpayers and Citizens Protection Act of 2007’ might come as a bit or a shock to anyone whose prior knowledge of Oklahoma was simply that it is the place where ‘the wind comes right behind the rain’ (Oklahoma, the Musical).
In 2007, Oklahoma was the first US State to pass strict local immigration laws because it did not feel that enough was being done by the federal government initially to control movement across the Mexican border, and then to enforce laws to prevent access to employment for illegals. It became an offence to harbor or in any way aid an ‘undocumented worker’ – and provided for the deportation back to the Mexican border of anyone illegally in the State (whether or not they had actually come from Mexico in the first place!). Spot checks based on racial profiling were, and are, prevalent.
This is the context in which Rilla Askew’s extremely well written and researched latest book, Kind of Kin, is set. Ms Askew is an Oklahoman who clearly loves her State, its people, and a great deal of what they stand for. The essential dilemma of her book is the contradiction many experience between their Christian beliefs (‘welcome the stranger’) and their desire to be law abiding citizens. Bob Brown, the father and grandfather of two of the main characters, helps immigrant workers hide in his barn – and is then described as ‘a Christian and a felon – and a felon because he is a Christian’.
There is a good and well described range of characters. Bob Brown, the born again Christian, his daughter Sweet who struggles to hold a dysfunctional family together, her son Carl Albert, her nephew Dustin, her husband Terry. Plus her niece, Misty Dawn, and her ‘illegal’ husband Juanito. Plus Luis, an ‘undocumented worker’ who escaped the raid on the barn. And, representing the less sympathetic viewpoint, the carpet bagging Monica Moorehouse focused on driving the Act through the Legislature to her greater glory – and Logan Morgan, a local TV news reporter, whose key purpose in life is to make sure the unfolding events take place on a time schedule that makes certain she stars on the 6.00PM news. Finally there is Arvin Holloway, the bullying and egocentric sheriff who was as unpleasant a child as he has turned out to be as an adult.
The book is set in real places that exist in South East Oklahoma – the descriptions of Wilburton (population 2,843) and Latimer County (11,155) ring very true of small town America. Attitudes, positive and negative, towards the illegals have echoes of 40 years earlier when the culture clash was then between black and white. In many ways Kind of Kin reads as a contemporary novel that is set in the past – it does not always feel like a book of the 21st century.
Ms Askew has a real personal interest in the storyline of the book. Her niece married an ‘undocumented’ of Mexican origin who had grown up in the States. He was arrested for a minor traffic offence in Tulsa – and then deported to Mexico… being told that he would have to join a twelve year line to get back into the US. She does, though, absolutely not preach against the legislation – but rather, in the book, takes a very balanced position between understanding the reasons for the Act being in place – and the impact it inevitably has on lives at a very human level. Her characters also manage to point out that being for or against the Act is not a straightforward class or political decision. The richest (right wing) industrialist in Oklahoma is against the Bill because of the effect it will have on his labour costs – and many otherwise conservative citizens are also against the Bill because they know, and have grown up with, ‘undocumented workers’ and their families – and see them as integral parts of their communities.
All in all, a very good read that sympathetically explores one of the very major social issues of modern America.
In 2007, Oklahoma was the first US State to pass strict local immigration laws because it did not feel that enough was being done by the federal government initially to control movement across the Mexican border, and then to enforce laws to prevent access to employment for illegals. It became an offence to harbor or in any way aid an ‘undocumented worker’ – and provided for the deportation back to the Mexican border of anyone illegally in the State (whether or not they had actually come from Mexico in the first place!). Spot checks based on racial profiling were, and are, prevalent.
This is the context in which Rilla Askew’s extremely well written and researched latest book, Kind of Kin, is set. Ms Askew is an Oklahoman who clearly loves her State, its people, and a great deal of what they stand for. The essential dilemma of her book is the contradiction many experience between their Christian beliefs (‘welcome the stranger’) and their desire to be law abiding citizens. Bob Brown, the father and grandfather of two of the main characters, helps immigrant workers hide in his barn – and is then described as ‘a Christian and a felon – and a felon because he is a Christian’.
There is a good and well described range of characters. Bob Brown, the born again Christian, his daughter Sweet who struggles to hold a dysfunctional family together, her son Carl Albert, her nephew Dustin, her husband Terry. Plus her niece, Misty Dawn, and her ‘illegal’ husband Juanito. Plus Luis, an ‘undocumented worker’ who escaped the raid on the barn. And, representing the less sympathetic viewpoint, the carpet bagging Monica Moorehouse focused on driving the Act through the Legislature to her greater glory – and Logan Morgan, a local TV news reporter, whose key purpose in life is to make sure the unfolding events take place on a time schedule that makes certain she stars on the 6.00PM news. Finally there is Arvin Holloway, the bullying and egocentric sheriff who was as unpleasant a child as he has turned out to be as an adult.
The book is set in real places that exist in South East Oklahoma – the descriptions of Wilburton (population 2,843) and Latimer County (11,155) ring very true of small town America. Attitudes, positive and negative, towards the illegals have echoes of 40 years earlier when the culture clash was then between black and white. In many ways Kind of Kin reads as a contemporary novel that is set in the past – it does not always feel like a book of the 21st century.
Ms Askew has a real personal interest in the storyline of the book. Her niece married an ‘undocumented’ of Mexican origin who had grown up in the States. He was arrested for a minor traffic offence in Tulsa – and then deported to Mexico… being told that he would have to join a twelve year line to get back into the US. She does, though, absolutely not preach against the legislation – but rather, in the book, takes a very balanced position between understanding the reasons for the Act being in place – and the impact it inevitably has on lives at a very human level. Her characters also manage to point out that being for or against the Act is not a straightforward class or political decision. The richest (right wing) industrialist in Oklahoma is against the Bill because of the effect it will have on his labour costs – and many otherwise conservative citizens are also against the Bill because they know, and have grown up with, ‘undocumented workers’ and their families – and see them as integral parts of their communities.
All in all, a very good read that sympathetically explores one of the very major social issues of modern America.
April 27, 2019
I read this awhile ago and never added it. I loved it at the time and intended to bring it up as a possible read for my former book club that most likely would have loved this.
SPOILERS:
I happen to love reading about small towns and deeply close knit people who get involved in "do the right thing" situations. I think people who love moving and beautifully told contemporary fiction will be moved by this book. I loved everything about it.
SPOILERS:
I happen to love reading about small towns and deeply close knit people who get involved in "do the right thing" situations. I think people who love moving and beautifully told contemporary fiction will be moved by this book. I loved everything about it.
September 22, 2018
Very timely and touching book about traditional rural people, farm labor immigrants, and family. The characters were filled out and rang true.
November 10, 2012
What happens to a family when one member falls in love with someone not exactly like themselves? The family dynamic tends to shift. Long held prejudices are challenged within the family and members tend to act and feel differently about those beliefs over time. Some are able to come around to the side of the family member who has brought in this “outsider” while others will cling even tighter to the way things used to be and resent the new norm even more.
The main character in Kind of Kin, Sweet, is caught literally in the middle of this repeating saga, only the drama winds up playing out in very loud and public ways, due to immigration reform laws taking place in her state of Oklahoma. Her family is deeply affected by these laws on several fronts and lines get drawn in the sand between Sweet and her husband.
Some issues are just plain complex. The millions of people living in the United States right now without having the necessary paperwork to be considered legal residents represent one of those issues that has no easy answers. The sheer fact that this issue is as old as it is has complicated matters further, because now families, children and young adults— who never even had a choice originally in how they wound up in their individual situation—are involved.
This emotional and gripping tale has the reader sympathizing with the main character one minute and screaming at her the next. It is a page turner that is hard to put down.
The main character in Kind of Kin, Sweet, is caught literally in the middle of this repeating saga, only the drama winds up playing out in very loud and public ways, due to immigration reform laws taking place in her state of Oklahoma. Her family is deeply affected by these laws on several fronts and lines get drawn in the sand between Sweet and her husband.
Some issues are just plain complex. The millions of people living in the United States right now without having the necessary paperwork to be considered legal residents represent one of those issues that has no easy answers. The sheer fact that this issue is as old as it is has complicated matters further, because now families, children and young adults— who never even had a choice originally in how they wound up in their individual situation—are involved.
This emotional and gripping tale has the reader sympathizing with the main character one minute and screaming at her the next. It is a page turner that is hard to put down.
November 17, 2012
Georgia “Sweet” Brown’s life is spiraling out of control. Her daddy, a preacher, is in jail for harboring illegal Mexicans because her no-good husband, Tee, turned him in to the pompous, celebrity wanna be sheriff. Her niece’s husband, also an illegal alien, is deported and the niece need’s Sweet’s help. Her son is beating up her nephew, Dustin, who had been living with her daddy, but comes to stay with her and Tee. Dustin runs away and Sweet suddenly feels the weight of the world upon her. Can she find her nephew? Can she get her daddy out of jail? Will Jesus help her if she prays to him?
Kind of Kin is a story of loss and despair, what is right and wrong, but it is also about finding love and faith with plenty of humor thrown in for good measure.
Sweet is strong, but also vulnerable and Askew has filled the town of Cedar, Oklahoma, where the story is set, with quirky, yet believable characters. She has also written a wonderfully descriptive story with current social and political issues that are taking place in communities all along the U.S. border with Mexico.
I found Kind of Kin to be a fast read and I think it would be a great book for discussion groups. I think it would appeal to readers who enjoy the works of Barbara Kingsolver and Adriana Trigiani.
I received an advanced reader's copy of this book from the publisher.
Kind of Kin is a story of loss and despair, what is right and wrong, but it is also about finding love and faith with plenty of humor thrown in for good measure.
Sweet is strong, but also vulnerable and Askew has filled the town of Cedar, Oklahoma, where the story is set, with quirky, yet believable characters. She has also written a wonderfully descriptive story with current social and political issues that are taking place in communities all along the U.S. border with Mexico.
I found Kind of Kin to be a fast read and I think it would be a great book for discussion groups. I think it would appeal to readers who enjoy the works of Barbara Kingsolver and Adriana Trigiani.
I received an advanced reader's copy of this book from the publisher.
March 13, 2014
Rilla Askew is an Oklahoma author who not only understands her people but also paints them in true colors on the pallete of her pages. Kind of Kin is an easy read, much easier than Fire in Beulah or her seminal The Mercy Seat , but this breezy narrative, nonetheless, is powerful and her voice is emphatic.
Sweet, the heroine, is Askew's signiture dutiful mother/wife/daughter trying to hold her world together against growing odds and is presented with the problem of an aging father taken to jail for harboring alien-immigrants. In attempting to sort this out, Sweet's life is upended and her entire community is drawn in to the dilemma.
The climactic scenes in the small Baptist church are perfect in every detail from cradle roll to hymnal and the absolutely true-to-type reactions of the pastor and congregation. Pure Oklahoma. The reader will recognize kin in more characters than one, and may even find themselves somewhere in that church yard. Kinship, after all, is the theme and the message of the book.
Immigration law is taken on, unabashedly, and the reader has no difficulty discovering where this Oklahoman stands.
Excellent read from a great Oklahoma-Proud author.
--mary--
Sweet, the heroine, is Askew's signiture dutiful mother/wife/daughter trying to hold her world together against growing odds and is presented with the problem of an aging father taken to jail for harboring alien-immigrants. In attempting to sort this out, Sweet's life is upended and her entire community is drawn in to the dilemma.
The climactic scenes in the small Baptist church are perfect in every detail from cradle roll to hymnal and the absolutely true-to-type reactions of the pastor and congregation. Pure Oklahoma. The reader will recognize kin in more characters than one, and may even find themselves somewhere in that church yard. Kinship, after all, is the theme and the message of the book.
Immigration law is taken on, unabashedly, and the reader has no difficulty discovering where this Oklahoman stands.
Excellent read from a great Oklahoma-Proud author.
--mary--
November 6, 2012
Kind of Kin is the story of an unconventional family at the heart of the debate over illegal immigration in Oklahoma. Set in 2008, when strict anti-immigrant laws were just starting to appear in legislatures around the country, it traces the consequences when a local farmer, Bob Brown, and his friend Pastor Jesus Garcia are arrested for harboring a group of Mexican workers in Brown's barn. The story then follows the effects of the raid for Brown's family, especially his daughter Sweet and grandson Dustin, who lived with him, as well as the citizens of the small town who must all follow their consciences to make tough decisions based on what they believe. I loved this book because it brought contemporary issues down to a personal level. Despite the serious subject matter, Askew's writing is often funny and never polemical. The story is fast-paced and gripping, and my only complaint is that I wish there was a sequel so I could spend more time with these wonderful characters!
January 30, 2013
If I was an editor, Rilla Askew’s Kind of Kin is a book I would hope to cross my desk. Contemporary, funny, dramatic and, at the same time, as socially relevant as they come, Askew manages to juggle the multiple perspectives surrounding the immigration debate with both humor and compassion. While brutally honest about the political (and personal) imperitives behind legislative decision-making, Kind of Kin provides just enough humanity to both sides that it doesn’t come across as excessively preachy. The novel is full of interesting characters caught up in the pure momentum of the situation and though it opens and is sprinkled throughout with the first-person accounts of ten-year-old Dustin Lee Brown (whose grandfather has been arrested for harboring illegal immigrants and who finds himself traveling with the only man to escape the round-up,) it is his Aunt Sweet who eventually steals the show, transforming from daughter, sister, wife and mother to a woman standing on her own.
January 30, 2017
Do you remember when you read Pigs in Heaven how you ached for Taylor and Turtle when nothing would go their way in Seattle? Be prepared for that kind of heartache when you start reading about Sweet and her young nephew Dustin. They are both victims in a way of the tragic choices of Gaylene, Sweet's half sister and Dustin's mother, and of the convictions of Bob Brown, Sweet's father and Dustin's grandfather, and of the laws and mores of Oklahoma. Askew shapes these two characters with such blunt authenticity that you can't help rooting for them, even though Sweet is not what I would consider a likable character. Though the characters are paramount, it was the narrative that kept me turning pages late into the night.
December 28, 2012
This is a wonderfully told story about both sides of the illegal immigration debate. It has the story from many points of view from the immigrants themselves to the families and communities that are torn apart when they become involved. Mr. Brown, a well respected community member, is asked to house some illegal workers for a day and ends up arrested for his kindness. His grandson, whom he's been raising, is then caught up in the fury of other people's hatred and his own confusion. He sets out to help a man who he finds in his grandfather's barn and unknowingly sets off a chain of events that will change his community.
February 5, 2013
This is the kind of book I love--a contemporary theme that really matters; a setting that is not completely alien but far enough removed from me that I feel as if I have entered a new world; vivid and loveable characters (some hatable ones too); a gripping plot, a lack of the annoying detached irony you find in so much contemporary fiction; finally, true sympathy for people who find themselves screwed over for no fault of their own. If you like those kinds of novels too, I recommend you read this one.
April 15, 2019
12% Done: Sheesh, talk about a different perspective. I am guilty of reading, vacationing, playing, dating and living in my AA bubble. This books view point was slap in the face. Like gah! When you know but learn you know nothing. um, wow.
33% Done: I no longer have any idea what I am reading. ijs.
Soooo Sweets is weak, her son an asshole and her husband, trash.
DNF @ 35%. There is enough going on in real life that irritates my soul for me to welcome more via reading. No ma'am, not today.
33% Done: I no longer have any idea what I am reading. ijs.
Soooo Sweets is weak, her son an asshole and her husband, trash.
DNF @ 35%. There is enough going on in real life that irritates my soul for me to welcome more via reading. No ma'am, not today.
February 17, 2013
This is the best novel I've read in three years. It's brilliant, compassionate, funny, and quite serious about putting its very real characters through an all too plausible hell. And Rilla Askew is kind enough to see these people through that hell to the other side, in style. I love it when a major work of fiction is also good for a few laughs and a lot of rapid page-turning. Don't wait. Read it. Then spread the word.
September 1, 2013
A small town in OK is caught up after passage of a stronger law involving employment of persons in the country illegally - this one reads like many of my favorite southern fiction novels - and it’s made very interesting by the way character’s choices are grounded in their faith. They may not all believe the same thing or the same way, but as a group most are people who are trying to live out their beliefs. Certainly church groups would like it as a book club option - but others will, too.
July 23, 2015
This book focuses on the themes of family, relationships, faith in God, friendship, trust, loyalty, etc. and how they all worked together to stand up against a law which affected their way of peaceful way of life in Ohklahoma. Though, I didn't find it comical...it was indeed an intense novel as the author builds the suspense for the faith of the characters. It could have been shortened and still maintain it's meaningful plot. Otherwise a good read.
December 4, 2012
This is a great book that deeply expresses the power of family and community in the context of illegal immigration. Though the book has a message about Mexican immigrants it is written in a way that isn't preachy and lets us make up our own mind. Great book for book clubs!
March 29, 2015
Another great novel from Rilla Askew, this one about a family in Oklahoma who are caught up in the midst of controversy and dissension in their community over illegal aliens.
May 11, 2013
I liked the book, but the ending did not tie up enough for me. The entire story takes place over two weeks and a lot happens that is still in motion at the end of the book.
April 7, 2014
A story within a story, within a story. Rilla Askew juggles several characters in a beautiful narrative for any age or reading genre.
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