Louise Erdrich

For the love of a woman, Tookie agrees to steal a body, only to find she's been set up, as there are drugs under the man's armpits. She takes the fall and goes to jail for some years, then gets out ten years later and starts working at Birchbark Books. When she becomes haunted by the ghost of one of their regulars and then the COVID-19 pandemic hits, George Floyd is murdered, and Tookie finds herself grappling with past and present in her personal life.

This is a bit of a departure from the show more other books I've read by Louise Erdrich. It's set in Minneapolis instead of the reservation, it's current rather than historical (as it was published in 2021, and the events happen in 2019-20, it's about as contemporary as you can get). Birchbark Books is the name of the independent bookstore Louise Erdrich owns, and the author herself makes a fictional appearance in the book. The book started out very funny and almost easygoing to me, but once the pandemic hits at about the halfway point, the tone gets darker and more intense. It doesn't shy away from the feelings of isolation and confusion we all experienced early in the pandemic, when we all weren't sure how the virus spread and were just figuring things out day to day. This is probably one of the best fictional representations, written in the moment, that I've seen of what it was like to live through 2020. Tookie's own journey to deal with the ghost in the bookstore and her own past make the stakes personal, and the ending is extremely satisfying. Highly recommended. show less

(audio) I was ready to chuck this novel after the second disc and was puzzled as to why an author who has always enchanted me in the past was wasting her skills writing about some really annoying high school seniors. Whew! I stuck with it and was absorbed by this story of the hardships of rural life and what one must do (rob banks, marry at seventeen, run off to the oil fields where you rent a refrigerator box for $200 a month while raccoons sneak in at night and nibble your toes, ride show more snowmobiles drunk and ruin lives, work at unloading trucks full of sugar beets, use deadly chemicals to ruin your source of income, join your frenemies at a book club, and more) to not just give up and move to the city. Life in Erdrich's Tabor, North Dakota, is inconceivably difficult, would be intolerable to anyone who moved there from elsewhere, and would be stultifying in any other author's hands. But Erdrich forces us to care about Kismet, pursued by two classmates until one catches her; Hugo, the rival; Crystal, Kismet's mother, abandoned by her husband, who has absconded with the church building fund; Gary, Diz, and Winnie, a family whose misfortunes evoke Kismet's sorrow; and Gary's teammates, who follow his drunken lead into a horrible disaster. By the end, or even by the middle, the reader is consumed by pity and by wonder at the ability of the characters to survive and to overcome their mistakes. What would a farm family make of this story? I'd love to know. show less

Happy endings are expected in romance novels, and because this isn't one, prospective readers will need to adjust their definition of a happy ending. A very well-written account of the prevalence of rape culture and femicide on both Native American Reservations and across the Plains states. In addition, this one requires an immediate shift in perspective regarding when and where vigilante justice is not only morally acceptable but mandatory.

The Night Watchman - Erdrich
4.5 stars

This is the Erdrich book that was published in 2020. It won the 2021 Pulitzer prize for fiction. It’s a wonderful book. I liked it. I think I would have liked it more if I’d read it before Erdrich’s The Sentence (published in 2021). I guess the Pulitzer committee couldn’t honor an author two years in a row.

After reading an Erdrich book, I want to talk about the people, not ‘characters’, the people. They inhabit a real place and they walk show more right off the pages. The night watchman of this book, Thomas Wazhashk, is based on Erdrich's grandfather. As a tribal council leader, he is heading an effort to block a federal bill that seeks to ‘liberate’ or ‘terminate’ Native American tribal identity. It’s a depressing uphill effort that is constantly side tracked by the day to day struggles of the individuals and families of the Reservation community.

While Thomas struggles to prepare a delegation for a trip to Washington, Patrice (Pixie) Paranteau has her own long list of problems. She is proud of her job at the jewel bearing plant. She provides the only income for her mother and younger brother while protecting them and herself from her alcoholic father. Her much loved older sister is missing. Pixie’s search for her sister in Minneapolis is both comic and tragic. I’ve always enjoyed Erdrich satire. There is something comic about Pixie’s brief career as the Waterjack, but I wasn’t able to appreciate it. I was too frightened for her. I was too worried about Pixie to enjoy her as much as I enjoyed Tookie in The Sentence. I did enjoy Edith, the psychic dog, who assisted in the rescue of Pixie’s sister. Edith was a light in the darkness when I was feeling the pain of too much suffering.

The book meanders through petty jealousies and family traumas. There seems to be dozens of minor plotlines as dozens of characters interact. I’ve learned to trust that Erdrich will tie everything together before I turn the last page. With this book, I think the life events of so many characters creates a necessary atmosphere. The reservation is full of vibrant individuals. There’s a sense of the constant movement of intertwining lives. There are no cardboard, faceless characters. Real people struggling against the weight of real injustice. show less