A Choctaw tale of tragedy, white and Indians, good and evil, revenge and forgiveness, even humor and magic realism.

“The hour has come to speak of troubled times. It is time we spoke of Skullyville.” Thus begins the House of Purple Cedar, Rose Goode’s telling of the year when she was eleven in Indian country, Oklahoma. The Indian schools boys and girls had been burned, stores too. By the time the railroad came, all of Skullyville had been burned.

Choctaw variant of Aesop's fable, The Tortoise and the Hare, in which Turkey assists Turtle in defeating Rabbit.

SINCE YOU’RE READING my second book, you already know who I am. You know my name is Isaac, that I’m ten years old, soon to be eleven, and you know I am a ghost. I am not dead, not in the usual way. I am not buried and gone, but I am a ghost. I have learned to travel by closing my eyes and thinking where I want to be. That’s how ghosts do it. I can disappear so no one can see me or I can gradually float into sight, as you will recall. But I didn’t tell you everything about being a ghost. I didn’t want to terrify you. But you’re older now—you can handle it.

Oklahoma, or "Okla Homma," is a Choctaw word meaning "Red People." In this collection, acclaimed storyteller Tim Tingle tells the stories of his people, the Choctaw People, the Okla Homma. For years, Tim has collected stories of the old folks, weaving traditional lore with stories from everyday life. Walking the Choctaw Road is a mixture of myth stories, historical accounts passed from generation to generation, and stories of Choctaw people living their lives in the here and now. The Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers selected Tim as "Contemporary Storyteller Of The Year" for 2001, and in 2002, Tim was the featured storyteller at the National Storyteller Festival in Jonesboro, Tennessee. Tim Tingle lives in Canyon Lake, Texas.

The Trans-Cedar lynching is an infamous tale buried deep in the subconscious of rural Texas history—although it made front-page headlines in the Dallas Morning News and even in national newspapers from May through November of 1899. This horrifying event is at the center of a compelling novel by author Mark Busby. He has not only researched original documents but has used family oral histories to probe the mysteries that still shroud a lynching that is as horrifying and baffling now as it must have been over a hundred years ago. The "War of Northern Aggression" was still fresh in the memory of those who lived through it; hog-stealing, moonshine, secret meetings, and the lore of the Texas Rangers were part of the fabric of country life, and there were many who refused to believe the war was really over. Against this backdrop, a running feud between the Humphries and the Wilkinsons exploded into a triple murder. When young Jefferson Bowie Adams II is given an assignment for a college course in 1964, President Kennedy has just been assassinated, the movement for civil rights is beginning to stir, and developments in Vietnam barely make the back pages of the newspaper. Setting out to record a story from his family's history, Jeff discovers—sitting in his grandfather's hideout while Pampaw smokes a forbidden cigar--a story that is as mesmerizing as it is shocking: the tale of a triple lynching in Henderson County in the late spring of 1899, an event Pampaw himself witnessed. Even as the scene of the crime is slowly being submerged by the filling of the Cedar Creek Reservoir, Jeff struggles to uncover the truths of what really happened that fateful night in 1899. Through the various recollections of his aging kin, Adams begins to uncover a web of relationships and a love story that ultimately leads him to a missing girl, a country graveyard, and a realization that he and his family are part and parcel of the stained history of the South.

A young adult debut about a teen girl who wrestles with rumors, reputation, and her relationships with two brothers.