The protagonist of Miko Kings is Lena, a woman who is “half Choctaw and half Sac and Fox” (18). The story is framed through the experience she has when she moves home to Oklahoma after over two decades away. Lena grew up visiting her grandmother MourningTree Bolin and learning Choctaw traditions every summer. However, the two were always estranged because MourningTree blamed Lena for the death of her own daughter, Kit, who died giving birth to Lena.

At 23, Lena moved away from Oklahoma. She longed to reinvent herself and leave her Indigenous identity behind. She left for New York since she knew that “the way [she] look[s]—long black hair, brown eyes, and a sturdy build—[she could] pass for Italian, Mexican, or French” (18), especially there. She began her career as a freelance journalist in New York, soon moving to the Middle East, where she built a life with a freelance photographer, Sayyed.

One thing that connects the characters in Miko Kings is their shared experience of grief and regret. For Lena, this was brought on by the death of Sayyed, who was killed during the US war in Iraq, when the hotel he was photographing was bombed.