Review by Kevin Brown
The title of Verble’s latest novel has multiple meanings throughout the work, ranging from the stealing up on somebody when they’re unaware to the theft of land that occurred when colonizers landed on North America to the life that the main character feels has been stolen from her.
Kit, a twelve-year-old Native American girl living in the middle part of the 20th century, tells the story of her life, ranging from when she was six, when her mother died of tuberculosis, to her current situation in a boarding school. That span covers a number of ways Indigenous people have continued to suffer from the colonization of their land. Her mother’s death reveals the poor healthcare; her Uncle Joe is an alcoholic, which ultimately leads to his death; his father, even though he served honorably in World War II (several people in town refer to him as a “war hero”), finds himself in a difficult legal situation due to Kit’s relationship with a new neighbor, Bella; the court puts Kit in a boarding school rather than with her family, trusting the state over her true relations.
Readers who are aware of what Native American children suffered at those schools won’t be surprised by what happens to Kit and her peers there. What they might be surprised by, though, is Kit’s resilience. As her relatives consistently remind her, they survived the Trail of Tears, so they can survive anything. Though the dominant white society tries to steal everything Kit values, she holds her true self in her heart, where nobody and nothing is able to take it away from her.
Stealing by Margaret Verble. Mariner Books, 2023.
Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. Twitter @kevinbrownwrites