Andrea L. Rogers Books In Order

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Girls Survive Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Andrea L. Rogers is a children’s and historical fiction author from Tulsa, Oklahoma. She attended the Institute of American Indian and Alaskan Arts and graduated with an MFA in creative writing.

Her novel Mary and the Trail of Tears: A Cherokee Removal Survival Story was listed as an NPR Best Book 202 by American Indians in children’s literature and NPR. She is a member of the Society of children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Ms. Rogers is also a board member of the Fort Worth Public Library.

Her short story ‘The Ballad of Maggie Wilson’ was a aprt of the award-winning anthology Ancestor approved: Intertribal stories for Kids.

Mary and the Trail of Tears: A Cherokee Removal Survival Story

As the story begins, Twelve year old- Mary and her Cherokee family are thrown out of their home by the US soldiers in May 1838. They were living in cabins, but now the troops want them out and are ready to kill anyone who isn’t cooperating.

Mary and her family end up separated from their father and soon face horrors like diseases, violence, internment, and unfavorable weather. She is strong enough to endure all that as she assists those close to her until they get to the Indian Territory.

The story features nonfiction support material and reader questions as the survival story explores the tragedy. The author shows the little time they were given to prepare and how they left many essential things behind. She also highlights the terrible conditions during their journey to the Indian Territory.

The story is told through the eyes of Mary, a young Cherokee girl who is full of heart with the love she has for her family and community bravely. Everything she faces with her family is heartbreaking, but in the middle are some pockets of joy.

Rogers has done an excellent job with the pacing to keep her readers on edge. The story has informative author notes and some critical thinking questions to make the readers participate more.

The novel tells a story of a terrible period in history through the eyes of the children who were affected. Readers can sense the fear and horror of the Cherokee displacement and their resilience in a compelling story using young, strong female characters.

She includes the Cherokee language and history without annoyance. Rogers sketches descriptive images of cruelty and theft in a few lines describing the illness and death in words that a young reader can understand and feel the horror in it. She also mentions that white people who intermarried with native people were a part of the Trail of Tears.

The story balances while exploring horrific injustices without the unintentional message that everyone in the majority culture agreed with it during that time.
Man Made Monsters
It’s a story about the extended Cherokee family over the centuries, from their homelands in Georgia in the 1830s to the Vietnam war and World War I into the present time and the future. Each short story gives an insight into a specific time period, leaving readers craving for more.
The stories feature generations of Cherokee families from the 1800s in the present and future.

The author lets the readers see snippets of their lives, piecing together what happened in the period between the stories. Alongside each, Cherokee artist and language technologist Jeff Edwards gives haunting illustrations to incorporate Cherokee syllabary.
The novel is a masterful haunting collection perfect for crossover appeal, but this should not shy you away. Horror fans will be thrilled more as there are werewolves, zombies, and horror elements. There are also predators of a distinctly American variety, intimate partner violence, horrors of empire, and dispossession.

The author’s imagination draws the reader to the long-told Cherokee stories, fantastical sea creatures, and many more.

In this young adult novel, Andrea reclaims her place as one of the most striking voices of the horror renaissance, which has happened for the last decade. She arranges the stories chronologically from the 1830s to the future.

They are stories about the Cherokee family through time featuring horror stories of ghosts, zombie among other scary creatures. The absolute horror of the stories lies in human violence, Misogyny, systemic oppression, and racism.

It takes on old monsters centering on young women while throwing in colonialism and cultural destruction themes. Horror is in the open, which may cause unease to the reader, keeping them thrilled as they wonder what will happen next.

There is also a focus on the family in both positive and negative ways. The supernatural parts, alongside the modern moments, are shocking. Be sure the stories aren’t easily forgotten as they stay in your mind long. They take place at varying times with different kinds of monsters that risk the border between realms but, in the end, clinging to one world.

Various monster and horror tropes throughout the collection are told in new and unique ways. It’s refreshing to see how characters from one story creep from one story to the next and how they are connected. A huge family tree at the start shows how everyone is connected.
Each story is unique and intertwined delicately, following a family through several generations. It focuses on the native family through the lenses was perfectly done with love and care.

The way the stories intertwined through the generations with various sets of people who are somehow related and yet are all different.

The author combines the everyday horrors of reality and the imagined horrors of the night to make a perfect blend.

Some stories are whimsical, while others are gritty. The readers have a chance to navigate a cosmology of monsters and cut across space and time

The stories explore traditional monsters and real, terrifying human monsters who frequently haunt and threaten people. It’s amazing how Rogers stretched the stories through the multiple generations of the same family without leaving any helpful information.

It gives the stories more weight as the reader can see things changed and how they didn’t change for the indigenous people of America through each story. The author allows the reader to learn about Cherokee folklore by discovering their traditions and history. They also get a chance to see how successive generations are reclaiming history.