55 pages • 1 hour read
LeAnne HoweMiko Kings
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “The Lord and Center of the Farthest”
Ezol has not visited Lena in three months. In the meantime, however, Lena has done much of her own research based on the notes that Ezol left her. She found material about the “The Four Mothers Society [, which] was an organization against allotment made up of the largest southeastern tribes, the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Cherokee” (126). The Day family were supportive of the group, hosting meetings for them at their stickball and baseball games.
After combing through many articles and papers, Lena decides to finally turn to the one document that contains Ezol’s own account of the Miko Kings: her private journal. She takes the ribbon off the journal and delicately begins to read its contents.
The journal includes entries dating from March 1888 to 1907 at the Good Land Indian Orphanage, when Ezol was a young woman attending the games of the Miko Kings. The contents of the journal contain several clues to the past. First is a haunting picture of an eye tree, which contains seven eyes. Another is an equation that Ezol quotes many times in the book. She writes, “My mother plus my father equals 4, accounting for my sister and me. My sister and I are palokta humma. Split red. Twins. Therefore numbers may split and remain unaccounted for as in one plus one equals four” (140). The buds of her romance with Blip Bleen are also woven into the journal entries, and she writes of her beautiful friendship with Justina. As she gets older, her mathematical theories get more complex, as do her relationships.
Lena spends the entire night rereading the journal. She still has so many questions, but she does know “that on October 5, 1907, Hope Little Leader will throw the last game of the Tin Territories Series. […] [W]hat happens to the team, and to Ezol Day and all the others, is tied up in this one game” (186). She closes the journal, wondering if Ezol will return to help her finish writing their book.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Portals to Other Worlds”
In the Elms Nursing Home in 1969, Hope is visited by the spirit of an old warrior riding in on a turquoise horse. He is not shaken by this since “[o]f late, all manner of spirits have visited him. Sometimes when he’s asleep, sometimes when he’s awake. This is good news as it means his time is very short” (189). Hope tries to sink into memories of when he and Justina first met, but the spirit has other plans for him. He dons a Miko Kings uniform and taunts Hope, sending him back into a memory of 1907: the last game.
The Miko Kings and the Fort Sill Cavalrymen have won four games each; today’s game will be the final match between the rival teams. Hope is lost in thought, remembering his fight with Justina two days ago. She accused him of being too loose with his money and felt that there was not enough financial security with the baseball team. She left him, and now Hope is “resolute. His mind is made up. He’ll take the money Bo and the others have offered him” (194). Perhaps by having enough money to build a home for the two of them, he can win Justina back.
Chapter 9 Summary: “Recurring Interludes”
It’s October 2006, and Lena gets the idea to try “using a blog to request information about the 1907 Miko Kings, the greatest Indian baseball team in history” (201). She thinks that there is a possibility that it could gain some traction, so she decides to write a blog post about the project.
Lena receives a large envelope from Algernon Pinchot. He had gone on to marry Evangeline, Justina’s great-granddaughter, and Algernon has since retired. He never finished the book about Justina since he was worried that his relationship with Evangeline would bias the text. However, he is happy to answer some of Lena’s questions about her.
Algernon writes, “[W]hen I reread my notes on her […] the only words that still come to my mind concerning her life are ‘grief’ and ‘isolation.’ By her own admission, she abandoned Hope Little Leader, as she had all the men in her life” (202). She did make it clear, however, that Hope was her one true love. When Bo brought her to Ada in 1906, after getting her out of New Orleans, she reconnected with Hope. There, she had her one daughter with him, also named Evangeline. He writes of her regrets but also her loves, as well as the wonderful and vast life that she lived.
In the postscript, Algernon adds that “Ezol Day died in a fire shortly after [Justina] fled Ada” (204). His letter includes a newspaper clipping detailing the fire and Ezol’s death. The article mentions that Ezol was survived by “[h]er uncle, Mr. Henri Day […] and his daughter, Cora MourningTree Day […] Cora Day was held for questioning concerning the burning, but later released” (205). Lena holds the letter in shock, feeling a wave of sadness for the violent and lonely way Ezol died. Even more shocking is the realization that “[t]he woman Ezol called ‘Cora’ was the woman who called herself MourningTree Bolin, [Lena’s] grandmother” (206). Ezol is Lena’s ancestor.
Overwhelmed by this revelation, Lena lays down and starts to dream. The book then transcends time as it describes each of the women in the book along with their grief. Lena sees her beloved Sayyed again for just a moment. Then she sees Ezol as she lies down on the floor in her home, suffocating from the smoke. Next, the text turns to Cora, first in the wake of Ezol’s death and then toward the end of her life as she buries the mail pouch in the walls and shreds the rest of Ezol’s papers and equations.
Chapters 7-9 Analysis
These chapters further explore The Intersection of Baseball and Indigenous Identity. The structure of the Indian League that Henri Day is building “seems to be a twin model of the Four Mothers Society. Organize the Indian teams into a franchise. Sell shares of the franchise to raise money and build it into a powerful league” (126-27). By basing his league on an ancient organizational, inter-tribal culture, Henri hopes for something that his people can reclaim after so much has been taken from them. The games were also a place where the Indigenous Americans could gather and organize meetings, in addition to supporting the players. Finally, Lena decides to post on a blog about the Miko Kings in hopes that baseball fans will reply with more answers to her questions. This method ultimately works, further proving the importance of baseball to Indigenous families.
When Lena hits a dead end with her external research, she decides to turn to the one internal document she has yet to read: Ezol’s journal. When Ezol “was around to talk to and ask questions of, [Lena] hadn’t bothered. […] Now that she’s disappeared, her private thoughts are fair game” (127). The journal is composed of a mix of things: newspaper clippings, handwritten entries, typed entries, and the drawing of the eye tree, one of the symbols in the book. Ezol mentions it a few times in the journal, especially when she writes about her equations (such as 1+1=4). As a schoolgirl, when she first explored this equation, she wrote that her teacher “forbid[] that [she] mention the eye tree again” (140). The entries mature as the writer does, and the mathematical theories grow more complex. These entries further explain what Ezol told Lena about space and time when she first appeared to her.
These chapters also highlight The Importance of Preserving an Accurate History. The journal begins to bring about clarity for Lena, but the arrival of a letter from Algernon Pinchot helps her piece together the rest of the story. Algernon writes, “I felt that because of my growing emotional involvement with Evangeline, it would be impossible to write an unbiased biography of Black Juice, as I had lost my objectivity (and my heart)” (202). Although he abandoned the book, he is still happy to help Lena out with a few of her questions. The most impactful revelation that his letter brings is the fact that Cora, Ezol’s cousin, was Lena’s grandmother. More than ever, Lena realizes how little she actually understands the past and how necessary it is that she finish writing the history down with Ezol. The text indicates that the true story of the Miko Kings has been buried in inaccuracies, and these inaccuracies are the reason that Lena herself is alienated from her own history and identity.
Lena experiences some of this history in Chapter 9. Howe paints a visceral, poetic journey of grief and regret through the lives of the different women in the book, thereby highlighting their interconnection across time and space. First, Lena sees her partner who died in the Middle East, Sayyed, again. He tells her, “Tukbrinin, yaa Habiiti. Bury me” (208). This is the grief that turned Lena’s world upside down but also brought her back to Oklahoma. Now, she must face her grief head on if she is ever to heal from her loss.
Then the dream switches to Ezol’s perspective on the night she died in the fire. She lies down, “still clutching [her] Uncle’s shares” (209). Ezol’s life flashes before her eyes as she succumbs to the smoke and flames. There is something gentle about her passing, however. Ezol’s spirit that visits Lena is not troubled by her death: There is an acceptance that is within Ezol that is not necessarily within the other characters. Justina and Hope, in their old age, wrestle with the past. Lena is still mourning Sayyed, but Ezol finds some peace in her passing. Considering Justina’s story and the way her silence about the painful experiences of her life left her grieved in her old age, the book suggests that Ezol’s ability to be honest about her life and tell her story (even after her death, when her spirit visits Lena to discuss the Miko Kings) is what makes her death a peaceful one.
Cora’s grief takes the spotlight next. The first memory is shortly after the birth of her daughter, Lena’s mother. Before the big game, Cora and Blip spent the night together. Afterward, she tried to convince him to take the money from Bo Hash and throw the game, but Blip refused. Now, she looks at her daughter and thinks of her cousin Ezol, who had loved Blip. She thinks that the baby “should have been Ezol’s, not hers […] Cora cries and swallows her grief whole” (210). Cora, most of all, holds onto her grief with a tight grip, never quite letting it go.
This scene explains a few different moments earlier in the book. First, it adds to the weight that Cora felt when Lena was a child: Not only was the daughter she lost her own, but her death was also a reminder of her cousin, who should have been the mother. Second, it is now clear why Ezol always looked so intensely at the pictures of Lena’s mother when she came to visit. The connection between her and the baby she never knew in life is palpable and evident in the way that Ezol interacts with Lena. Finally, at the end of her life, Cora recalls the night of the fire again and how she stayed in her room a month after Ezol’s death. It was after she emerged that she “changed her middle name to MourningTree. Later to Mrs. Hank Bolin” (211). This moment accounts for the discrepancy in Cora’s name: Her family’s story was nearly forgotten because Cora—just as Lena would years later—tried to deny who she was, her land, and her history.
