Ghosts of Crook County by Russell Cobb
DAVID J. WEBER BOOK PRIZE FINALIST: The true--and unsolved--story of unabashedly greedy men, their exploitation of Muscogee land, and the hunt for the ghost of a boy who may never have existedFor readers of David Grann's award-winning Killers of the Flower Moon
In the early 1900s, at the dawn of the "American Century," few knew the intoxicating power of greed better than white men on the forefront of the black gold rush. When oil was discovered in Oklahoma, these counterfeit tycoons impersonated, defrauded, and murdered Native property owners to snatch up hundreds of acres of oil-rich land.
Writer and fourth-generation Oklahoman Russell Cobb sets the stage for one such oilman's chicanery: Tulsa entrepreneur Charles Page's campaign for a young Muscogee boy's land in Creek County. Problem was, "Tommy Atkins," the boy in question, had died years prior--if he ever lived at all.
Ghosts of Crook County traces Tommy's mythologized life through Page's relentless pursuit of his land. We meet Minnie Atkins and the two other women who claimed to be Tommy's "real" mother. Minnie would testify a story of her son's life and death that fulfilled the legal requirements for his land to be transferred to Page. And we meet Tommy himself--or the men who proclaimed themselves to be him, alive and well in court.
Through evocative storytelling, Cobb chronicles with unflinching precision the lasting effects of land-grabbing white men on Indigenous peoples. What emerges are the interconnected stories of unabashedly greedy men, the exploitation of Indigenous land, and the legacy of a boy who may never have existed.
Russell Cobb is an associate professor in Latin American studies and creative writing at the University of Alberta. His nonfiction writing has won many national and regional awards. He is the editor of The Paradox of Authenticity in a Globalized World and the reporter of the This American Life story that served as the basis for the Netflix film Come Sunday. His journalism has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, Slate, and the Nation, and on NPR.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780807021392 |
| Title | Ghosts of Crook County |
| Author | Russell Cobb |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Beacon Press |
| Year published | 2025-09-23 |
| Number of pages | 304 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |