RaveLos Angeles Review of BooksThe descriptive prose is at once brooding and funny, surreal and absurd, but the cumulative effect is of genuine spiritual weight. Like N. Scott Momaday, Hobson blends material and immaterial experiences in his characters’ minds. Hobson has noted Momaday as his biggest influence, and that influence is most keenly evident in descriptions where the visible and invisible worlds intersect. Modes of perception—spiritual, physical—are layered in certain scenes, as when Maria observes birds who seem to embody the spirit of her late son, and the spirit Tsala drinks water from a creek. The narrative is studded with many such affecting and thought-provoking moments ... The Removed works to counter the commonplace horrors it depicts. Hobson powerfully elucidates modes of surviving and healing that will leave thoughtful readers with provocative questions ... a funny, sensual, realistic, thoughtful, horrific, and ultimately truthful account of the ongoing scourge of racism in American life. Hobson’s intelligent and compassionate treatment of the subject gives his readers space to ask what it would take to correct endemic bias and inequity, and the resulting damage to Native families. Most of all, his intense concentration on small moments of healing, even amid ancestral trauma and grief, shows the way toward a more peaceful life for everyone.