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Once the story gets past the beginning chapters and gets into the criminal element in New York, Red Bailey being lined up as a murder suspect there, and then on the run in the Sierra Nevada, it's all fun twists and turns and deception upon deception packed into a mere 153 pages.

The entire setup feels flimsy & convoluted to me. I don't understand what's so special about Mumsie McGonigle that he'd let her go or change his life for her or murder for her, but also not so special that when they split up it's no big deal. Or that he'd not take steps to get rid of evidence that she knows about so that associates of hers can blackmail Red Bailey a decade after the split. But hey, women are mysterious and wiley creatures who magically make men do dumb things, am I right?

Been on my TBR since 2013. Clearing it off now.

Something beautifully multifaceted arising from complex relations, a quantum theorist writes a clear and compact dissolution or eulogy of our understanding of time in artful conversation with ancient poets and thinkers.

You know, I think I first read this right when it came out in 2006 or 7, and I distinctly remember its unreliably-gendered narration being a key point in my enlightenment about gender and identity — I also remember that I was uncomfortable around trans people and unexpected gendered pronouns before this book, and after it (and ANCILLARY JUSTICE) I was much less concerned.

Also, it's a wild bit of Twilight Zone plus Truman Show plus any generic prison break plus a story of revolutionary anarchists plus Memento mind-editing (voluntary and involuntary) and dysphoria (many flavors) and consent (and what it means under all that)

I'm sad that this novel didn't receive wider acclaim, but I'm sorta not surprised, because every single character here is a genocidaire, even the heroes, and it's hard to sit comfortably with that

In my tracking of books reads over on LibraryThing, this is book #1700 that I have read in my all time list.

Check, matriarch and soon-to-be-widow, attempts to keep friends and family safe while living in the Cherokee Nation in 1875.

A fine read, but a little too sprawling and unfocused for my tastes. I found Verble’s “Stealing” a much more intimate and compelling read. Partly because “Cherokee America” isn’t written in first person, but also because its wide-ranging portrayal of a time and place which touches upon many characters and situations lacks the sensitive depiction of a single protagonist I so appreciated in “Stealing”.

new vocabulary: newel

the central supporting pillar of a spiral or winding staircase