The roads taken by the family in The Removed , Brandon Hobson's new novel, are essential ones in this moment of national reclaiming. The story in this book is deeply resonant and profound, and not only because of its exquisite lyricism. It's also a hard and visceral entrance into our own reckoning as a society and civic culture with losses we created, injustices we allowed, and family separations we ignored ... a braided story of one family's memories of loss and the trauma of heritage ... Powerful storytelling. The Echotas are constantly crossing over and returning from death, heritage and trauma, and Hobson puts the reader right in the center of their paths. Together, their collected and shared stories fill the world around them with a luminous seeking through grief and a learned yearning, now ours as well, that pierces through unanswered calls for justice.
... what sets this novel apart, what stamps it as extraordinary, is the way it interweaves the grimly familiar with elements of fantasy, thereby illuminating both present and past ... Hobson’s style is colloquial throughout; he works in American plainsong even when summoning voices from beyond. If Tsala seems to trace a hero’s journey, it’s because of his subject matter, not any grandiose rhetoric, and the same applies for Maria’s deepest bouts of melancholy ... The whole comes together convincingly, the narratives attaining cosmic balance. Still, Hobson’s outstanding creations are the two women, their drama so rich you almost wonder why he bothered with the more bizarre business ... when I call The Removed his finest accomplishment, I mean that it best harnesses his complete sensibility. Pulling out all the stops, he’s carved a striking new benchmark for fiction about Native Americans.
The 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.
This ought to be a recipe for an overcooked melodrama. But Hobson...has written a subtle, powerful novel that connects the Echotas’ immediate struggles with loss and memory to a wider swath of Cherokee history, from the Trail of Tears to the present. It’s a surprisingly magnetic and eerie book ... Hobson masterfully balances the family’s realist conflicts with more supernatural touches. This duality is at its strongest and most disorienting ... In this book, Hobson makes that line feel palpable, complicated and true.
... it's a beautiful, elegiac narrative that seamlessly blends the real and supernatural ... [a] wondrous, deeply felt book. The past is present, the Trail of Tears ongoing. The Cherokee stories of 'vengeance and forgiveness' are alive.
Spirituality is woven into the story like a soft thread of silk, binding the everyday lives of the characters with otherworldly warnings and messages of strength. Just as The Removed is rich in Cherokee folklore and culture, it also reflects the historical suffering of Native American communities and the modern-day strife they yet endure ... This gut-wrenching tale of broken hearts and shattered dreams spotlights the devastation caused by ongoing racism in our country, while also providing a ray of hope on the distant horizon.
... explores the harm and danger of past and ongoing trauma, as well as the magic and possibility of a shared cultural perspective. Hobson deftly weaves the spirit world through the fabric of the lives in the novel, creating an elegant tension and highlighting both the sorrow of the Echota family and the beauty of their culture. Though rooted in --- and inseparable from --- the Cherokee culture, the book is also a complex, inventive and thoughtfully universal tale of love and longing.
If you’re looking for a powerful read that explores the generational impacts of trauma, The Removed is the book for you ... richly developed ... Hobson takes us deep into the abyss of the soul-wrenching pain, peeling back the curtain of secrecy to explore the many ways people deal with trauma (some healthy, some not). He doesn’t shield the reader or sugarcoat the harsh realities of grief, especially when the tragedies could have been avoided. In fact, he seems to want the reader to suffer along with this family, which proves to be the power of good storytelling. He helps us build more empathy for others by inviting us to crawl into another person’s skin and walk around in it, to experience life through their lens, to feel their suffering so deep it shakes us. And shapes us ... Readers will learn much about the Cherokee traditions, myths, and heritage, while also learning about the challenges many of these families face in modern-day America. Told with interwoven voices, Hobson’s tale will leave readers wiser in many ways, reminding us all of the power of resilience and the importance of equality ... This is a timely read for those looking to face life’s darkest truths and learn the lessons our ancestors want us to hear.
Once in a while, you come across a book that seems to exist in its own bubble of space-time ... A word for such a story might be numinous, which ably describes Brandon Hobson’s splendid The Removed ... Hobson...weaves strands of the past and present so skillfully that events that would be improbable in the hands of another author are inevitable in The Removed. More than anything, in the case of the beleaguered Echota family, Hobson understands William Faulkner’s adage, 'The past is never dead. It’s not even past.'
... a multilayered, emotionally radiant second novel ... Hobson uses Cherokee tradition and the Echotas' story to amplify each other, blending past and present in a narrative of blistering loss and final healing. Highly recommended.
Hobson is a master storyteller and illustrates in gently poetic prose how for many Native Americans the line between this world and the next isn’t so sharp. This will stay long in readers’ minds.
Spare, strange, bird-haunted, and mediated by grief, the novel defies its own bleakness as its calls forth a delicate and monumental endurance. A slim yet wise novel boils profound questions down to its final word: 'Home.'
