The Night Watchman

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 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 show more 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

Last summer my husband and I met with the Blue Water Indigenous Alliance to donate an heirloom bible given to my husband's fourth-great-grandmother by John Riley, Ojibwe chief of the Black River Band. The bible is currently on display in the Port Huron Museum and will become part of a new museum highlighting native heritage in the Port Huron area.

The 1826 New Testament had been published by the American Bible Society without a binding. Someone encased it in thick, rich brown leather held together with coarse thread. The book has a gentle curve as if kept in a back pocket for a long time, the edge of the book worn away.

My husband's great-great-grandmother read that volume daily until the day of her death, and that made it special to her show more family, but to hold an artifact that once was in the pocket of their ancestor and kin was even more sacred to those of Native heritage gathered to accept it.

I have often thought about that meeting. For all my research on John Riley and my reading about Native American history, after that meeting I felt my otherness and my ignorance. I read the white man's histories and think I know Riley. What arrogance.

Reading The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich reinforced my awareness of ignorance born of privilege in a European dominated society. I had never heard of the Indian Termination Policy being carried out just after the time of my birth. Natives were to be assimilated with all the rights of an American citizen. It was intended that individuals find work and become self-supporting and pay taxes. Reservations were taken out of Native control, health care and education no longer provided. Life was harsh before termination; it got worse after termination. It was 'extermination' under a new name.

Erdrich's novel is based on her grandfather's life and his successful endeavor to block the termination of the Turtle Mountain Reservation.

The night watchman is the hardworking hero of the story, a family man who works nights at the new factory that employs Ojibwe women to perform the delicate job of creating jewel bearings. He is determined to protect their reservation and people from termination, working around the clock and raising money to travel to Washington, D. C. to present their case before Congress. Their way of life, their community is threatened. They feel a deep connection to the land that supported their ancestors since time immemorial.

Patrice is one of the young Ojibwe women working at the factory. The job allows her to support her mother and brother. She dreams of going to university to study law. She tries to blend into European society but encounters racism and sexual harassment. Two men vie for her attention, unaware of her naivety about relationships and sex and desire.

When Patrice's sister Vera goes to the city disappears, she goes takes all her savings to look for her. It is a nightmarish trip into the depravity of the underside of the city, a place where young native women are vulnerable prey. She returns with Vera's baby.

It is hard to write about this novel. It left me with strong feelings, including deep shame for how the prevalent European society has treated Native Americans since we landed on these shores. Erdrich does not exploit our feelings, there is no melodramatic writing when describing chilling scenes of exploitation and abuse.

The courage and strength of the characters is inspirational. I loved how one love storyline was handled, showing that true love is communal and not about personal desire.

Fiction can educate and enlarge our limited experience. And I thank Erdrich for furthering my understanding.

I was given access to a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased. show less

Louise Erdrich’s The Night Watchman arrives right on time for many Americans as we take a hard look at how our country treats and treated BIPOC. Through a variety of voices and characters, she looks at a Chippewa community in rural North Dakota in the 1950s as they face the government’s most recent disgraceful and heinous actions toward indigenous peoples--what would come to be known as the Termination Acts. Based loosely on the life of her grandfather, Erdrich explores themes of family, love, government, freedoms while giving us deeply drawn and memorable characters. The Night Watchman is not an easy book, but it is a rewarding one for readers of historical fiction, US history, and family sagas.

this review is for the audiobook edition, narrated by he author.

louise erdrich is such a gift to the literary world!

in this novel, she is focusing on time in the mid-1950s, when the US government intended to "free" Native Americans from federal supervision. of course, as witnessed again and again in history, the government's true intention was the abrogation of treaties, termination of tribal rights, and - ultimately - total abandonment of native americans already impoverished by centuries of genocidal policies. "known now as Termination, it was an insidious way to separate Native Americans from the landholdings and resources they’d secured, and the obligations the united states government had agreed to in removing them from their show more original homelands." in fact, in support of how heinous the government intentions, erdrich quite cleverly uses actual quotes from termination supporter senator watkins - a deplorable racist of a human being.

yes, this is very much a political story. erdrich, though, balances this with a tender and difficult coming-of-age story, along with the representative story of the turtle mountain community as a whole.

erdrich's writing is gorgeous - how she uses language is truly beautiful. this is a very layered and nuanced book, animated by intricately developed characters.

as far as her narration: perfection! erdrich has a wonderful voice. she truly brought the characters into full focus, and easily conveyed the emotions, challenges, dynamics, and journeys. for a story (and a history) so rife with cruelty and injustice, the rational calmness and eloquence erdrich possesses shows an incredible amount of grace.

i selfishly hope erdrich will write more about patrice and wood mountain and vera. they are such rich characters - i grew quite attached and really am not ready to say goodbye. show less

The Night Watchman tells the entwined stories of people of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in the 1950s, at the time when the U.S. Congress has introduced a resolution to terminate the tribe.

This novel is based on historical fact: House Concurrent Resolution 108 of 1953 sought to terminate many tribes in several states, including Turtle Mountain. Author Erdrich’s grandfather was the inspiration for protagonist Thomas Wazhashk, the titular night watchman.

Thomas Wazhashk is a night watchman at the DoD jewel bearing plant, where many of the Turtle Mountain women work, including Thomas’s niece Pixie, a.k.a. Patrice. Thomas is also tribal chairman and is troubled by how to respond to the Termination Act. He writes legislators and show more BIA officials, gets signatures on petitions, and organizes a fundraiser to send a delegation from the tribe to Washington to speak at the Congressional hearing against the resolution. He is also visited by the spirit of his friend Rodrick, who died at the boarding school they both were sent to.

It also tells Patrice’s story: Her sister Vera has gone missing in Minneapolis, and Patrice makes a trip to look for her. There we get a horrifying glimpse of the drug and sex trafficking that can await Native American women looking for work in the big cities.

As is often true of Erdrich’s novels, despite honesty about the injustice, racism, abuse, addiction, and poverty that threaten Native Americans, she also shows us how friendship, family, community, and culture can form a safety net, without being didactic or polemical. Her characters are complex and interesting, and their stories touch your heart. show less

In the early 1950s, news of a new "emancipation" bill from the US Congress reaches Thomas Wazhashk, a Chippewa council member and resident of the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. The bill threatens to terminate the rights, identity, and sheer existence, of Thomas's Native American reservation community. Louise Erdrich, the author, models Thomas on the life of her grandfather who fought against the termination of the Turtle Mountain Reservation in the same era.

Thomas is the night watchman, or security guard, for a relatively new jewel-bearing plant near the reservation. Patrice Paranteau is recent high school graduate working at the jewel-bearing plant to support her mother and younger brother. While Thomas fights for show more the existence of their Native American community, Patrice journeys to save her sister, Vera, who disappeared after moving to Minneapolis. Meanwhile, a cast of characters in the reservation community explore themes of love, family and exploitation, and bring subtle humor to the story.

Following Thomas and Patrice's stories was a delightful treat. This book shares a story that needed to be told, and the beauty of Erdrich's prose, along with her deep research and understanding of the topic, do the story justice. This novel is packed full of characters--Wood Mountain, Juggie, Valentine, Barnes, and more--capturing the far-reaching but study definition of family in the reservation community. The prose captures beautiful dream sequences and reservation lore--in particular, the muskrat story will stick with me--that deepen the story.

Yet, in the end, The Night Watchman left me wanting more. I wished for more of Vera's story, which felt cut abruptly short. I wished for a deeper exploration of Millie and Rose and Zhanaat. Erdrich has begun to develop fascinating characters, and I wish to see them develop even more.

This is my first Louise Erdrich novel, and I look forward to reading many more. show less

Essentially, this is a story about courage. About the courage of Thomas Wazhashk, who rallies his tribe, the Turtle Mountain Chippewa, to resist efforts by a U.S. Senator to terminate their tribe, despite the personal price this exacts on his family and health. The courage of Patrice “Pixie” Paranteau, abandoning the safety of her reservation to search for a sister who is being sexually trafficked by dangerous criminals. The courage of Zhaanat, Pixie’s mother, struggling to shield her family from extreme poverty and a drunken, abusive father while simultaneously operating as the spiritual core of her tribe. The courage of Wood Mountain, the ambitious young boxer who trades his ambition for love and principle. The courage of show more college student Milly Cloud, overcoming OCD and anxiety to testify before Congress on behalf of the tribe. The courage of Roderick, who sacrificed his life to preserve his childhood friends from abuse at a cruel boarding school (and whose ghost occasionally reappears to narrate portions of the story). The courage of men fighting a never-ending battle against the temptations of alcohol, of young women discovering the scope of their personal power, of people fighting for the values they believe in.

Beneath all this courage runs a strong undercurrent of faith. Erdrich explores a variety of them: the Catholicism imposed on Native Americans in government-run boarding school; the Mormonism of the two missionaries, Elnath and Vernon, dispatched to the town to save souls; the indigenous faith of the Chippewa, grounded in a reverence for the natural order. All three, she implies, may be based on equally preposterous myths, but that’s not what matters – what matters is whether a person’s faith provides the spiritual comfort that they require to make sense of a world too often ruled by cruelty, racism, and injustice. (Spoiler: In this particular novel, Mormonism definitely doesn’t pass the test!)

Perhaps the thing I most appreciated about this novel is the complexity of the characters, the male characters in particular. Some are whiny drunks, but others are incredibly nurturing. Some racist or misogynistic, but others unquestioningly respectful. Some weak, but others quietly honorable. What emerges is a narrative that feels like it honestly represents the flawed but proud human community of Turtle Mountain.

Erdrich is one of the best storytellers out there, and this definitely belongs among her best. Her pacing is terrific: she understands how to allow a story to reveal itself organically rather than force it into a plot structure. Her voice is original and lyric. (When you read something by Erdrich, you know you’re reading something by Erdrich.) The modest incorporation of magical realism – a talking dog, a ghost, dream quests – operates as an organic element of the narrative rather than a distracting literary device. Her representation of Native American identity and spiritualism is respectful but also sometimes disarmingly irreverent. Above all, her enormous empathy for the characters infuses every page of this lovely, engrossing, often quite funny tale. I’m entirely comfortable recommending this without any qualms or reservations. show less