National Book Award

She brings her impressive literary toolbox to bear here, and the novel ranks among her best work, alongside “American Woman” and the National Book Award laureate “Trust Exercise.”

As Ned Blackhawk wrote in “The Rediscovery of America,” his National Book Award–winning history, “The exclusion of Native Americans was codified in the Constitution, maintained throughout the antebellum era, and legislated into the twentieth century: far from being incidental, it enabled the development of the United States. U.S. history as we currently know it does not account for the centrality of Native Americans.”

Ward is one of the most gifted writers of her generation; in addition to this indelible work of nonfiction, she’s twice been awarded the National Book Award for fiction and is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.

Just three years later, her second, “Salvage the Bones,” was nominated for — and won — the 2011 National Book Award for fiction.

Justin Torres is the author of “We the Animals” and “Blackouts,” which won the National Book Award.