And Other Stories
by Stacie Shannon Denetsosie
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Sep 2023
144 pages
Genre: Short Stories
Paperback Original.
Publication Information
In The Missing Morningstar and Other Stories, Stacie Denetsosie confronts long-reaching effects of settler-colonialism on Native lives in a series of gritty, wildly imaginative stories.
A young Navajo man catches a ride home alongside a casket he's sure contains his dead grandfather. A gas station clerk witnesses the kidnapping of the newly crowned Miss Northwestern Arizona. A young couple's search for a sperm donor raises questions of blood quantum. This debut collection grapples with a complex and painful history alongside an inheritance of beauty, ceremony, and storytelling.
"Not only are the metaphors and similes surprising, but the turns within each story are as well. Just when it feels like a plot might move into a familiar trope, it upends itself in the best way... Propulsive and complex, this is a gorgeously written debut." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Denetsosie soars when depicting the characters' close relationships with one another. It's a potent display of modern Navajo life." —Publishers Weekly
"The poignant stories of The Missing Morningstar represent a world of people searching for love, fulfillment, and belonging." —Foreword Reviews
"The stories in The Missing Morningstar effortlessly exude power and charm in equal measure. Denetsosie appears on the page fully formed. Traditional and contemporary life are placed next to one another, create harmony and discord, transport and transcend, gifting us with a much needed depiction of modern Native life as it is lived, in beauty, with difficulty, and always, thoroughly human. A feat of voice, texture, heart, and an absolute thrill to read." —Tommy Orange, author of There There
"The Missing Morningstar is full of voices that reveal grief and redemption. This collection is a compelling compendium of family, truths, loss and love. Denetsosie's voice is a wonderful addition to contemporary fiction that explores Indigenous lives. I loved it." —Brandon Hobson, National Book Award finalist and author of The Removed
"Denetsosie overlooks nothing, giving everything an opportunity for beauty. In stories that thrum with humor and vitality, characters are tied to the land and one another in ways that nurture and sometimes hurt. They'll have you laughing, crying, and, sometimes, singing alongside them." —Kelli Jo Ford, author of Crooked Hallelujah
This information about The Missing Morningstar was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Stacie Denetsosie is a member of the Navajo Nation and her clans are Todích'íí'nii (Bitterwater) and born for Naakaii Dine'é (Mexican). Her work has appeared in Yellow Medicine Review, Scribendi, and Phoebe. She holds an MFA in Fiction from the Institute of American Indian Arts and is a contributor to the Torrey House anthology Blossom as the Cliffrose: Mormon Legacies and the Beckoning Wild. She lives in Logan, Utah.
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