Kind of Kin - Softcover

Askew, Rilla

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1782390138 ISBN 13: 9781782390138

Publisher: Atlantic Books, 2014

Synopsis

Your Grandpa is a felon and a Christian. He says he's a felon because he's a Christian. So says Aunt Sweet to her nephew Dustin, when her father, who has been raising Dustin, is arrested for hiding migrant workers. The law that makes harbouring 'illegals' an offence is the brainchild of the ferociously ambitious Oklahoma politician Monica Moorehouse. Aunt Sweet takes Dustin in, but Dustin is bullied by her son, and so goes on the run, aided by an illegal the sheriffs didn't find. Meanwhile, Sweet is asked by Dustin's married sister to hide her husband, a Mexican without papers. As Grandpa Brown holds fast to his beliefs and Dustin remains missing, Aunt Sweet fights to hold the family together, and to do what seems right. In a gripping and compelling narrative, Kind of Kin lays bare the consequences of a law that exiles workers, turns friends into informers, and tears apart families. It also shows how some - and ultimately a whole town - will unite to protect their own.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

It's 2008, and Sweet Kirkendall's life is unraveling: her father is in jail for harboring undocumented Mexicans, her husband is away working, her young son is turning into a bully, she's a full-time caretaker for an invalid elderly family member, and now Sweet has to take in her orphaned ten-year-old nephew, Dustin, because his grandpa has been jailed. A contemporary everywoman, Sweet struggles to hold her family together under pressures from within and without. She has little money, no help, and surely no time to truck with current political issues—until they come roaring into her life via a new state immigration law, a fractured family, a lost child, an ambitious legislator, a grandstanding sheriff, a niece in desperate need of help, and the national news media camped on her doorstep.

In a novel that tackles hot-button subjects—immigration, religion, civil rights, small-town politics, and the everyday struggles of working families—Rilla Askew vividly weaves together an authentic and compelling narrative with grace and humor.

 

About the Author:

Rilla Askew has written three literary novels previously for which she received a 2009 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Dublin IMPAC Prize, and twice received the Oklahoma Book Award. Askew divides her time between upstate New York and Oklahoma.

About this edition

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1782390138
• ISBN 13: 9781782390138
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432