Review: Maud's Line

Title: Maud's Line

Author: Margaret Verble

Date completed: 5 August 2016

I've probably said this before, but I'm not a huge literary fiction fan, but I heard about this book on a podcast I regularly listen to and it was mentioned that it was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize. The author is part Cherokee and set the story on her family's land, so I figured the Native American realities captured would be a fairly accurate representation of reservation life in the 1920s. It didn't disappoint in that regard. Maud was a heroine the reader could pull for. She worked hard and accepted the violence and tragedy of her life with determined practicality. She loved books and when a peddler comes to town with the same love, they bond and she sees a way to leave reservation life behind. I won't spoil anything more than that. It was a quiet book only covering a few months, but it definitely opens the reader's eyes to the plight of Native Americans on reservations, especially the women who are so often overshadowed in the history books.