RaveLos Angeles Review of BooksIn Chelsea T. Hicks\'s striking debut collection of stories, A Calm and Normal Heart, characters from the Osage diaspora travel the continent looking for home...In prose that’s sharp and funny by turns, Hicks depicts families fractured by American colonialism, patriarchy, and racism...The diaspora began when Osage chiefs used their third daughters to form alliances with French traders in the 18th century...The divisions between traditional Osage families and off-reservation Osages remain...Hicks’s stories are remarkable for their vivid portrayal of these nuanced family histories and tribal tensions...In strongly crafted coming-of-age stories, young professionals — a model, a poetry professor, and a teacher at an immersion school in the Osage Nation — work to be seen as Native and to understand choices their ancestors made...The collection is a celebration of the language, and the intellectual and emotional journey we make with our ??͘??? — our ancestors — to learn it...In these superbly crafted stories, Hicks uses dry humor and sinuous sentences that wrap around and sting...The strength of the prose hooks us and won’t let go.
