Between Earth and Sky
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4.3 • 39 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A young girl learns about friendship, betrayal, and the sacrifices made in the name of belonging in this poignant novel exploring the tragic legacy of forced assimilation and abuse at Native American residential schools in the early 20th century.
The award-winning debut novel by the author of The Nurse’s Secret is now available with new bonus content, including an interview with the woman who inspired it – Amanda Skenandore’s mother-in-law and a member the Lake Superior Ojibwe.
On a quiet Philadelphia morning in 1906, a newspaper headline catapults Alma Mitchell back to her past. A federal agent is dead, and the murder suspect is Alma’s childhood friend, Harry Muskrat. Harry—or Asku, as Alma knew him—was the most promising student at the “savage-taming” boarding school run by her father, where Alma was the only white pupil. Created in the wake of the Indian Wars, the Stover School was intended to assimilate the children of neighboring reservations. Instead, it robbed them of everything they’d known—language, customs, even their names—and left a heartbreaking legacy in its wake.
The bright, courageous boy Alma knew could never have murdered anyone. But she barely recognizes the man Asku has become, cold and embittered at being an outcast in the white world and a ghost in his own. Her lawyer husband, Stewart, reluctantly agrees to help defend Asku for Alma’s sake. To do so, Alma must revisit the painful secrets she has kept hidden from everyone—especially Stewart.
Told in compelling narratives that alternate between Alma’s childhood and her present life, Between Earth and Sky is a haunting and complex story of love and loss, as a quest for justice becomes a journey toward understanding and, ultimately, atonement.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Skenandore's intensely emotional debut reveals the difficulties faced by Native Americans who were torn from their culture to integrate into a white society where they were not accepted. In 1906, after Alma Mitchell reads a newspaper article about her childhood friend, Harry Muskrat, being on trial for murdering a federal agent, she asks her attorney husband Stewart to defend Harry in court. The narrative alternates between 1906, when Alma and Stewart travel from their home in Philadelphia to Wisconsin to aid in Harry's defense, and the late 19th century, when Alma made friends with her classmates at Stover, the Native American school managed by her father. Though Alma had Native American friends, learned their language, and saw them as equals, she never truly understood their plight after they were forced from their land to assimilate into white culture. As Alma visits the White Earth reservation as an adult and helps her husband investigate the murder, she is disturbed by the poverty she sees and how the Native Americans have been taken advantage of. Alma's conversations with Harry lead her to examine her motivation to help him and to realize she must come to terms with the tragedies of her past, and how her inability to understand the cultural divide may have contributed to the death of someone she loved. Skenandore's deeply introspective and moving novel will appeal to readers of American history, particularly those interested in the dynamics behind the misguided efforts of white people to better the lives of Native Americans by forcing them to adopt white cultural mores.
