Review: Shelterwood: A Novel

Shelterwood: A Novel

By Lisa Wingate (Ballantine)

Literary scholars sometimes debate the difference between historical fiction and fictionalized history. Once again in Shelterwood, Lisa Wingate walks that fine line as she explores a heartbreaking period in the history of Oklahoma, the state of the best-selling author’s childhood and college years.

Painstakingly researched in old newspapers, oral histories, congressional records, court cases and other primary sources, Wingate interweaves historical events and real people like social reformer Kate Barnard into a novel that tells of a time when powerful men exploited or eliminated Choctaw and other tribal children to wrest control of their valuable, oil-rich land.

Shelterwood unfolds as a tale of greed in the past and greed in the present in a single geographic location through alternating chapters narrated in 1909 by 11-year-old “Ollie” Olive August Peele Radley of Pushmataha County, Okla., and in 1990 by Valerie Boren-Odell of Talihina, Okla. Recently transferred, Boren-Odell has become a law enforcement ranger at the newly opened Horsethief Trail National Park, where the mystery begins when an anonymous caller reports the discovery of human skeletal remains in a cave on Horsethief Trail land.

In 1909, after her father is murdered, Ollie’s mother remarries and becomes addicted to whiskey and opium. Fearing her stepfather and what he’ll do not only to her but to the family’s young Choctaw ward, Ollie flees taking Nessa and becomes her strong, smart protector. The two girls connect with similar children, mostly Choctaw, trying to hide and survive in the woods and wilderness under horrific conditions. Occasionally, they encounter kindness, but not often.

In 1990, outsider Boren-Odell finds herself distrusted by bosses and co-workers. She learns by accident about the bones of the three girls who died in the early part of the century. As the widowed mother of a young son, seeing the remains touches her soul, and she becomes obsessed with unearthing their story. It’s up to Val and her one ally, Choctaw Tribal Policeman Curtis Enhoe, to uncover the truth of the abandoned children, a truth that proves as dangerous to a female ranger in 1990 as to Ollie and Nessa 80 years earlier.

Ultimately, the two stories converge as old secrets, greed, graft and conflicts over ownership of the land and its wealth transcend the years. Everything should have changed, but seemingly nothing has as the tales of exploitation and making problems disappear continue, at least until three generations unite and fight for answers, justice and resolution, risking their lives in the process.

As in Before We Were Yours, Lisa Wingate carves in Shelterwood a powerful, heartbreaking, yet heartwarming novel written from the pages of history and told through the composite eyes of those who lived and survived. Reading or listening to the audible book evokes anger, sadness, grief and disbelief, but also reveals resilience, courage, compassion and selflessness. Despite occasional tears, you’ll be glad you read Shelterwood. I was.

Kathy Robinson Hillman, former president

Texas WMU and Baptist General Convention of Texas

Waco