Miko Kings play games of bases

At times, reading Miko Kings (Aunt Lute Books: 2007) is like standing amidst the wind-blown, dried grass that rises out the red dirt, while looking through an old leather-covered picture album. An album populated with sepia-toned pictures of people in cowboy hats, checkered shirts, or calico. LeAnne Howe's novel of baseball and inequity rolls out of the Oklahoma praire like a tumbleweed on a hot wind. The story bounces along, back and forth between past and future. But that's exactly what makes Miko Kings a great story; if it was written conventionally, it would not be nearly so good.

Told primarily from the point of view of Lena Coulter, a reporter who has returned to Oklahoma from assignment in Jordan, the novel primarily tells the story of a team of Choctaw playing in the Oklahoma Indian Territory just prior to statehood. While the core story is about the team and a momentous game to be played against a rival team made up of U.S. cavalrymen, Howe's novel is also about the lives of three people: Hope Little Leader, the team's pitcher, Justina Maurepas, a civil activist, and Ezol Day, the young girl who witnessed the events of that turn-of-the-century game and who brings the story to Lena's pen.

Lena learns about the baseball game and the various characters through Ezol's journal, and through "visits" by Ezol's spirit to her present-day home in Ada. (It wouldn't be a story about Native Americans without a spirit guide). We learn of Hope Little Leader's youth spent in a boarding school for blacks and Indians in Virginia. It is there he met Justina, who was a young teacher. The rebellious duo go their seperate ways. Hope returns to Oklahoma, where he finds direction (baseball) and a cause (the threat of his people losing their land) and a method to fight it - baseball. Justina ends up in New Orleans where she discovers her fight in unjustice in the brothels of that city.

Underlying all unjustice, of course, is wealth, whether it's money gathered from using other people, or the value of land. And into the mix of Miko Kings is racial bias, between blacks and whites and red and whites. Fortunately, for the novel, Howe nests the racial aspect inside differences in social class - between the haves and the have-nots of rural Oklahoma, and the streets of New Orleans. Something stronger would definitely taken away from the story. Instead, we are given a rich tale of societal differences that develop very nicely, with rather sympathetic characters.

The story abounds with subplots - Hope Little Leader's plan to help his people retain their integrity, if not their land; Justina's brushes with violent protests; and Ezol's maturation process through orphanages and step-homes. But the subplots - like the dust that blows around the characters on the Oklahoma prairie - come together at the end in surprise fashion and tie everything together for Lena, who is trying to recover from her own traumas.

The story of the Miko Kings' game with the soldiers has its roots in historical fact. During the winter of 1869, the 7th Cavalry - based at Fort Sill and under the command of General George Armstrong Custer - played baseball against a team of Kansas volunteers comprised of Native Americans. And during the late 1880s, Apache tribesmen, interned at Fort Sill, played baseball while soldiers watched.

While the story is centered around a particular baseball game, baseball is not the focus of the story and there is no need to weigh down the novel with countless scenes of baseball action. There is just enough to liven the story and move it forward. There is, however, plenty of discussion about the players, brief vignettes of different games, and insights into how Native Americans developed a stick and ball game (althought the discription shades more toward lacrosse than baseball).

Howe's novel is enjoyable, as well as educational and eye-opening at times. It is well crafted and a satisfying read.