Rilla Askew

Set primarily in eastern Oklahoma during the 1970s, these are stories of outsiders haunted by ancient wrongs, yearning to escape, reckoning with primal griefs; each of the characters wrestles with the bonds that wound them and the places that keep them tethered to their roots.

Foreword Reviews:

The intimate short stories of Rilla Askew's The Hungry and the Haunted illuminate lives touched by grief, guilt, and social change.

Set in Oklahoma and the American Southwest during the 1970s and told across multiple perspectives, these diverse stories follow outcasts and travelers whose lives and relationships are defined by their settings. The tumult of the era is handled with depth as people grapple with their personal and shared histories, attempting to build new lives from the rubble of grief and tragedy. And particular focus is placed on Southwestern Indigenous people and teenage girls on the outskirts of society.

In one story, an elderly man reckons with his past and his role in the destruction of Indigenous culture. In "Tahlequah Triptych," a family's stories are retold across three generations; it's a compelling exploration of the interconnectedness of a place and its people. Elsewhere, young, grieving women attempt to sever their connections to their pasts, but instead find that they are tethered beyond understanding to their family and terrestrial roots.

The characterizations are rich; they focus on how people contend with the specters of their pasts. Throughout, complicated backstories and deep wounds are addressed with care and delicacy. The prose rides the line between lush and restrained, making careful use of descriptive and metaphorical language to root the stories in their places and times. Subtle details and specificity flesh out this multifaceted portrait of Oklahoma further, preserving a precarious sense of it at a political and social crossroads.

The challenging, beautiful short stories collected in The Hungry and the Haunted cover fraught histories that play out in individual lives and linger into the present.

Reviewed by Bella Moses

Lincolnshire, 1537. Amid England's religious turmoil, fifteen-year-old Anne Askew is forced to take her dead sister's place in an arranged marriage. The witty, well-educated gentleman's daughter is determined to free herself from her abusive husband, harsh in-laws, and the cruel strictures of her married life. But this is the England of Henry VIII, where religion and politics are dangerously entangled. A young woman of Anne's fierce independence, Reformist faith, uncanny command of plainspoken scripture cannot long escape official notice, or censure.

Nine linked essays spotlighting the complex history of Askew's home state. From the Trail of Tears to the Tulsa Race Massacre to the Murrah Federal Building bombing, the author examines Oklahoma's narrative as a microcosm of our national saga. Yet no matter our location, she argues, America must own the full truth of our history if the wounds of division in our nation are ever to heal.

Set during the tense days of the Oklahoma oil rush, FIRE IN BEULAH centers on the complex relationship between Althea Whiteside, an oil wildcatter's high-strung wife, and Graceful, her enigmatic black maid. Their juxtaposing stories-and those of others close to them-unfold against a volatile backdrop of oil-boom opulence, fear, hatred, and lynchings that climax in the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.

A richly comic yet heartfelt novel about people who want to do right and still do wrong, and people who do right in spite of themselves, as they try to help, protect, and provide for those they love most when a new state immigration law threatens an ordinary American family and throws a close-knit community into turmoil

Harlan Singer, a gifted harmonica-playing troubadour, shows up in the Thompson family’s yard one morning. He steals their hearts with his music, and their daughter with his charm. Soon he and his fourteen-year-old bride, Sharon, are on the road, two more hobos of the Great Depression, hitchhiking and hopping freights in search of an old man and the settlement of Harlan’s long-standing debt.

"A triumph of scholarship and imagination...a powerful novel in a mesmerizing prose out of the Old Testament by way of Faulkner. Askew is a prodigious talent." --Newsday

Each story in STRANGE BUSINESS is a small epiphany, exquisitely wrought. Askew orchestrates her many voices with the assurance of a master composer. But although the author’s technical skill will take your breath away, it’s ultimately her warm heart that makes STRANGE BUSINESS a small masterpiece.” Diana Postlethwaite, Washington Post Book World