Excerpt from The Removed by Brandon Hobson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Sonja, who was sixteen and the eldest sibling, was eccentric in her own way too, retreating to her room every day after school and staying there all night, rarely coming out. Sensitive to the strange intimacy of family conversations, she preferred solitude. On this night, she was in her bedroom writing long letters to boys at school and listening to Joy Division. She would later wonder why she hadn't been in the living room spending time with Ray-Ray. If only I'd been a better sister, she often thought.

The night of September 5, his last night alive, Ray-Ray lay next to his younger brother Edgar on the floor with the Legos. "We should build a castle," he said. "It could be beautiful, brother."

"I'm building a monster," Edgar told him excitedly. He held up his Lego creature and roared.

"Little brother," Ray-Ray said, "there are enough monsters in this world."

Present Day
Maria Echota

SEPTEMBER 1
Near Quah, Oklahoma

AT SUNSET THE LOCUSTS FLEW, a whole swarm of them, disappearing into the darkening sky. They buzzed each night, moving through wind and trees, devouring crops and destroying gardens. The sky was pink and blue on the horizon. Another unusually rainy season had caused weeds to sprout up everywhere, so we were seeing more locusts, more insects.

"When was the last time it snowed?" Ernest asked.

My husband was in the early stages of Alzheimer's. He was seventy-four but looked young for his age. He still kept his gray hair long in a ponytail, still had his same laugh and sense of humor, though he was getting more and more confused. We had known about the Alzheimer's for almost a year, and of course these things never get easier with time. He grew frustrated easily. He would forget little things like why he'd walked into a room. Whenever he did this, he would look down at the floor and struggle to understand. I would find him rummaging through the garage, and when I asked him what he was looking for, he couldn't tell me. He was growing considerably worse.

"I'm turning into tawodi," he said. "Tawodi means hawk in Cherokee."

We were sitting on our back deck, where Ernest liked to look for geese flying over the lake. I watched him lean forward, squinting.

"I'll eat locusts and honey like John the Baptist," he said.

"Ernest," I said quietly.

"I see a sailboat out there. I see smoke or fog, maybe a spirit."

"There is no spirit out there," I told him.

He reclined back in his chair, still looking.

"Ernest," I said, "tomorrow Wyatt is coming. Did you remember?"

He was thinking.

"The foster boy," I said. "I have Ray-Ray's old room ready for him."

"You already mentioned it before."

"He'll be here tomorrow," I said. "Remember?"

"Wyatt, sure," Ernest said. "Stop asking me if I remember."

"I wanted to make sure."

"I got it."

The call had come a few days earlier from Indian Family Services. It was Bernice, a former coworker of mine. I had retired from social work a year earlier. Bernice said they needed an emergency foster placement for a twelve-year-old Cherokee boy. Would Ernest and I be able to take him in temporarily?

"You're our only available Cherokee family," Bernice said. "His dad's in jail, mom left the state. Right now he's at an aunt's, but she's in bad health. We're trying to contact grandparents."

When I told Ernest, I was surprised he agreed. We had never fostered before. "He can mow the grass," Ernest said. "He can play checkers. Catch fish."

We could see the lake behind our house, and a small amber pond down past where the road ended was also visible. Most people liked to go fishing at the lake, but Ernest preferred the pond, which he said was always a decent place to fish, full of catfish and largemouth bass. There were fewer people there, and bullfrogs and yellow-striped ribbon snakes lived in the water. He had been talking about fishing a lot more.

Excerpted from The Removed by Brandon Hobson. Copyright © 2021 by Brandon Hobson. Excerpted by permission of Ecco. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.