By the Fire We Carry

April 1, 2024

Nagle, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and creator of the podcast This Land, blends history and modern reporting to investigate the forced removal of Indigenous people onto treaty lands in the United States. She also recounts the 2020 Supreme Court ruling that returned the largest acreage of tribal land in U.S. history. With a 100K-copy first printing. Prepub Alert.

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Starred review from July 29, 2024
Journalist Nagle reports in her brilliant, kaleidoscopic debut on the legal battles leading up to Sharp v. Murphy, the startling 2020 Supreme Court decision that upheld the terms of a 19th-century treaty granting the Muscogee Nation land for resettlement in Oklahoma. “I wrote this book because I wanted the story of this historic Supreme Court decision to be well documented,” but also “to catalog the cruelty of what brushed aside” in popular discussion of the case, Nagle explains. She interweaves the complex courtroom drama with an empathetic, harrowing recap of the 1999 murder of George Jacobs by Patrick Murphy, the case which revealed that the Muscogee Nation’s reservation had never officially been dissolved. Another strand traces the history of the 19th-century forced removal of Native peoples from the Southeast to Oklahoma, including Nagle’s own ancestor, Cherokee Nation leader Major Ridge, who was among those who signed away the Cherokee homeland and was murdered for the perceived betrayal. This family saga is the most complex and rewarding part of the story; Major Ridge hoped the relocation would save his people’s lives, as President Andrew Jackson (a nefarious presence in Nagle’s story) had threatened to chase them “into the sea.” Nagle’s narrative is lucid and moving, especially as she uses archival sources to recreate the mounting terror experienced by Native peoples in the Southeast as violent mobs of outsiders swarmed onto their land. It’s a showstopper.

Starred review from August 1, 2024
In this thrilling legal expos�, investigative journalist Nagle uses her exemplary skills to scrutinize the Supreme Court case, McGirt v. Oklahoma. Considered one of the most significant Native American rulings in a century, McGirt upheld the existence of the Muscogee reservation, righting a wrong that had been actively overlooked and steadfastly ignored by Oklahoma and the federal government since 1866. Nagle covered the case for six years and as a member of the Cherokee Nation was closely invested in its twists and turns. Here she reveals the intricacies of the murder case that served as a vehicle to challenge disestablishment of the reservation, the lawyers who uncovered the potential connection between that case and the larger Muscogee issue, and the many ways the State of Oklahoma sought to fearmonger its way to victory. In alternate chapters, she explores the journey of the Muscogee, Cherokee, and other tribes to Oklahoma, which highlights a much older crime directly involving her ancestors. Combining impeccable research with rich detail and scintillating prose, Nagle tells a story that is two hundred years in the making and enormously relevant today. Excellent for book groups; fans of Patrick Radden Keefe and David Grann will be transfixed.

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Starred review from August 15, 2024
A Cherokee journalist unpacks the landmark 2020 Supreme Court case that recognized the eastern half of the state of Oklahoma as Indian country. In 1832, almost 200 years beforeMcGirt v. Oklahoma, the Supreme Court held inWorcester v. Georgia that the Cherokee nation was a sovereign power. Andrew Jackson ignored it, forcing the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muscogee (Creek), and Seminole nations--collectively called the Five Tribes--to leave their ancestral lands in what is now the southeastern United States and go west of the Mississippi to Indian Territory. Nagle gracefully carries readers back and forth through time, explaining the history of the Five Tribes before and after the Trail of Tears, the evolution of U.S. policy toward Native Americans, and the unique peculiarities of Indian law, thornily complex in part because "US courts kept bending the rules, and not to the benefit of tribes." She is just as careful to elucidate the technicalities of court procedure, helping readers understand how a death-row appeal on jurisdictional grounds led to "the largest restoration of Indigenous land in US history." The legal arcana are dense, but Nagle's writing is not. With restrained passion she exposes one injustice after another. Following a recitation of the greed and lawlessness prompted by the discovery of oil on Muscogee land, she observes that the "origin story of the great state of Oklahoma contains a vast criminal conspiracy to rob Native people of their land and money." Of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, considered the swing vote in the case, Nagle writes: "After everything our ancestors sacrificed, our land was in the hands of this one person--who knew a fraction of our history, if that. The feeling was powerlessness." Gripping, infuriating, and illuminating--a valuable corrective to our national ignorance.

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