Stone River Crossing

* "Richly descriptive and leavened with humor, Tingle's complex novel offers valuable insights into rarely told history."

* "[Stone River Crossing] is a potent mix of history, folkways, and friendship, often wrapped in a gossamer web of magic realism. Tingle, a member of the Choctaw Nation, draws on the group's own stories to spin a tale that begins slowly but builds and twists, until the tension and intensity will have readers at the edge of their chairs."

* "As he did in his picture book Crossing Bok Chitto (illustrated by Jeanne Rorex Bridges, 2006), Tingle (Choctaw) captures a rarely explored bond that formed during colonization between enslaved Africans and Native Americans, an alliance of survival under white colonial tyranny. He evokes a 19th-century Southern landscape, presenting it through the lens of Americans whose perspectives are too rarely shared. This vital story will deepen readers' understanding of the nation's complex history."

Tingle's narrative, set in 1808 Mississippi, brings to life a multitude of fascinating characters while illuminating a little-known moment in history, when the Choctaw risked their lives and lands to help free slaves. First told by Tingle in a picture book, Crossing Bok Chitto: A Choctaw Tale of Friendship & Freedom (2006), the story is expanded here. Throughout the tale—told with heart and much humor—runs the refrain "we are all in this together," a fine message for our current divisive times.