"This is where the twentieth-century Indian really began . . . not in the abstractions of congressional acts, but on the prairie diamond."-Henri Day

Miko Kings is set in Indian Territory's queen city, Ada, Oklahoma, during the baseball fever of 1903 and simultaneously in 1969, the Vietnam era. The story centers on the lives of Hope Little Leader, a Choctaw pitcher for the Miko Kings baseball team; Lucius Mummy, a switch hitter; and Ezol Daggs, the postal clerk in Indian Territory. It is Daggs who, in attempting to patent her Choctaw theory of relativity, inadvertently changes the course of history for the Indians and their baseball team.

Though a lively and humorous contemporary work of fiction, the narration draws heavily on LeAnne Howe's careful historical research: boarding schools for Native American children, Native American participation in the Vietnam War, and-most centrally-the story of the little-known Indian Baseball League of the late 1800s and early 1900s.

LeAnne Howe, an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, is an author, playwright, and scholar. Born and educated in Oklahoma, she has read and lectured throughout the United States, Japan, and the Middle East. Her first novel, Shell Shaker, earned her a 2002 American Book Award and a Wordcraft Circle Writer of the Year in Creative Prose award. In 2004, Shell Shaker was published in French.

Howe is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities award for research and a Smithsonian Native American internship for research. She has written and directed for theater, radio, and film. Her most recent film project as the narrator/host of Spiral of Fire aired on PBS in the fall of 2006. She is currently an associate professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.