The Roads of My Relations

Oklahoma Writers’ Federation Trophy Award for Best Fiction Book of 2000 

“The Roads of My Relations is a store of hearty, attentive stories of an extended family. Devon A. Mihesuah creates a mighty sense of time and place in the close relations of her characters, an actual native presence. The many roads over more than a century come alive in a generous mosaic of memories, philosophies, and cultures. The reader becomes part of this great native family.”–American Book Award winner Gerald Vizenor 

“A sprawling, yet intimate, portrait of one family’s place in [Native American] society and in the larger society in which we all live.” —Resound



“Throughout her vignettes, truth is carefully balanced with magical realism and remnants of Choctaw lore. For her first work of fiction, Mihesuah wields a deft pen. Full of powerful imagery, sometimes whimsical, often bleak . . . What is particularly refreshing about Mihesuah’s lushly detailed work is that it eschews both contemporary New Age renderings of Native American culture and nineteenth-century romanticism. . . . Mihesuah creates fascinating characters and robust histories.” —American Indian Quarterly

With the publication of Roads of My Relations, [Mihesuah] branches out to fiction, thereby extending the scope of her call for nation-based, tribally specific writing. Roads of My Relations . . . travels rewarding roads of family remembrance, with compelling meditations on losing home, making home, and returning home.” –SAIL

On reading The Roads of My Relations it became immediately apparent that I was reading more than a piece of fiction. The work is like a reflexive culture history of one Choctaw family as they labor to find peace in a rapidly changing world. As Mihesuah writes in her afterward, many of the stories evolved from family stories but are embellished to add interest. I would add to her admission, intricate, complex cultural nuances that lead the reader through a complex maze filled with humor, tragedy, and persistence. . . Every once in a while it is a delight to venture beyond the traditional disciplinary boundaries drawn by academia. By reading Roads of my Relations I had the opportunity to do so. It was a pleasurable journey. The story is an absorbing tale, mixing history, legend, and the author’s vivid imagination, accompanied by rich cultural insights. In her first collection of stories, Devon A. Mihesuah gives us a rich mosaic of interwoven lives.—American Indian Culture and Research Journal