As Brown As I Want

About the Book

The summer of 1952, Lawton, Oklahoma...Eight-year-old Glory has a father who's taken out a $50,000 accidental death insurance policy on her-now he's spending the summer trying to collect.

In his first attempt, he throws Glory to the snakes, but a giant alligator snapping turtle scares the snakes away.

Glory writes in her diary: Well, Powwow Pete drove us home to talk to Mom, but we didn't get very far. Mom thinks I just have a wild imagination. At least Powwow Pete believes me. I think it was the turtle that killed it for Mom.

"How could there be a turtle that big?" she scoffed. They talked some more and Powwow Pete got kind of mad and got up to leave.

This was one of those times when a kid thinks they're talking about a turtle, but the grown-ups are really talking about something else entirely. In this case, I think Powwow Pete was accusing Mom of still loving my dad, but he never said that, he just kept talking about the turtle. Mom was doing the same thing: talking about the turtle but meaning that she didn't want to get messed up with some guy who was a pathological liar.

As Brown As I Want: The Indianhead Diaries was a 2004 Oklahoma Book Awards finalist and a first place fiction winner at the Surrey conference in 1999.

About the Author

Janelle Meraz Hooper is a writer from Oklahoma with a Hispanic background. This is her second novel set in Oklahoma. A Three-Turtle Summer was published in September 2002. Her short stories and commentaries have been published in books, magazines, and newspapers. She welcomes e-mails from her readers. Write to her at: hooperdj@nwrain.com