The Mercy Seat
by Rilla Askew
List Price: $13.95
Pages: 448
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0140265155
Publisher: Penguin USA
Both of Rilla Askew's
novels to date, Strange Business (1992) and The Mercy Seat
(1997), are situated in her home state of Oklahoma. She was born in the
foothills of the Sans Bois Mountains in 1951, a fifth generation citizen
of her state. The western landscape and history that is a part of Askew's
heritage lives on in her imagination and her work. The Mercy Seat
is based on Askew's own family's relocation from Kentucky, and many incidents
materialize into fiction from a distant past that was kept alive through
family stories. Askew's deep connection to her surroundings is evident
everywhere in her work. In The Mercy Seat, she says, "This country.
Oklahoma. The very sound of it is home."
Askew originally moved to
New York to become an actress, but turned instead to writing plays and
fiction. Critical and popular response to her work was immediate and overwhelmingly
positive, her first book winning the Oklahoma Book Award.The
Mercy Seat was nominated for a PEN/Faulkner award for fiction,
the Oklahoma Book award, and the Mountains and Plains award
for fiction, and won the Western Heritage award for best novel of 1997.
Askew now moves back and forth between the southern Catskills and the
Sans Bois Mountains of Oklahoma.
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