The Night Watchman

Louise Erdrich's The Night Watchman in the best book I've read in years. Over the days that I've read it, it has stayed with me, almost like being in its own right, drawing my attention, suggesting a different perspective, leading me to smile at the wonders this world holds. This may sound like hyperbole, but it is not. Last night, I work up at 3a.m., wide awake and ready to dive back into The Night Watchman. I didn't want to wait until morning, until I'd had "enough" rest to return to it.

Erdrich weaves a wonderfully complex tapestry here with the strands working so well together that one doesn't recognize the complexity of what one is reading until later. She recounts a crucial moment in the modern history of indigenous Americans; she show more plumbs the question of what "identity" is actually composed of,;she confronts us with the pervasive violence against indigenous women that continues to this day; she offers us portrait after portrait of people building their own paths in life, rather than following paths already walked by others; and she provides a desperately needed message about the importance of resisting erasure of any kind.

Whether it's (independent) bookstore, library, or download, get a copy of this book and immerse yourself in it. It's exactly what we need at this time. show less

“Long as the grass grows and the river flows.”

This book just grabbed right ahold of me - my heart, my mind, and my spirit! I hated putting it down! Her writing... my goodness! The description of the quilt of patches, and the origins of the materials is just wonderful! And her characters are so alive! I felt for them all! Pixie (Patrice), Thomas, Wood Mountain, Zhaanat, and even the ghost, Roderick, all had a strong hold on me. And whether it was boxing, making love, suffering, or fighting to save the Turtle Mountain Reservation from "emancipation", I was hooked by everything that they did! It was a pleasure to read, and a sorrow to finish.

"Together they drank the icy birch water, which entered them the way life entered the trees, show more causing the buds to swell along the branches."

Honestly, to me, that is word magic! 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

Like all of Louise Erdrich’s novels, The Night Watchman is set in a Native American community in the Dakotas, and draws on the author’s cultural and family history. In 1953, the reservation was threatened by government action which proposed to end “privileges” provided to the tribe and relocate them to lands of supposedly better opportunity. Tribal chair Thomas Wazhashk spends his shifts as a night watchman writing letters to officials, and uses his spare time to educate the community and gain their support and involvement to try to block the government’s plan.

Patrice, aka Pixie, has come of age on the reservation and now works in the factory where Thomas is night watchman. Pixie’s sister Vera has disappeared, and Pixie show more decides to go to the city and find her. The experience opens her eyes to life off the reservation. Although she successfully rescues her sister’s baby, she returns home with only vague leads about Vera’s whereabouts, and her life settles back into a routine involving work and supporting her mother and brother.

While these are the two main threads in this book, there are many more characters and several subplots. Erdrich tells a vivid tale and I enjoyed getting to know these members of the community, But at the same time, it felt like she threw in “everything but the kitchen sink,” which meant that even the dominant threads were not fully developed and the denouement felt rushed. The Night Watchman would have been better if some of the characters and subplots were minimized and held in reserve for future novels. 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

Previous books by Erdrich that I have tried reading didn't really connect with me, but I was drawn into this novel right away by the precisely drawn two main characters, Thomas and Patrice. They led me by the hand into this novel about life on the reservation in the 1950s, which was desperately poor but also simple, beautiful, and deeply spiritual. Erdrich makes this last point when she brings on two Mormon missionaries who are flummoxed to find that Indians were neither as simple nor as easy to convert as they believed, that their beliefs were so tightly interwoven into their identity they could not be separated. The overarching story is about the tribe's fight against termination, but this is a portrait of Indian life to counteract show more the stereotypes as well as tell the truth about their experiences in relation to the white world and the US government. Sometimes I lost track of who all the side characters were, but I never lost their sense of humanity that Erdrich so deftly endows her characters with. Erdrich's prose is simple but resonant, and her short chapters have a rhythm of stories told round a fire. This book was definitely worthy of the Pulitzer Prize, which it won in 2021. show less

What an incredibly interesting and heartbreaking book, and one that I had a hard time putting down. The relatively modern (1950's) history of the era of "termination" between the US Government and tribes of Native Americans forms the backdrop of this book, set in the Chippewa reservation and Minneapolis.

The Native peoples are doing their best to live on the land that is left to them on their reservations, after the best farmland has been taken by White farmers. There are still skills to hunt, trap, and gather what foods the land provides. In addition, there is a jewel factory that employs mostly women tribal members; their work is to attach jewel slices to watch mechanisms. The title character of the night watchman is based on the show more author's own grandfather, who is the night watchman at the factory. He is also the main force in gathering together the people and signatures and money for the tribe to plead their case in Washington, DC, to keep their land and avoid termination.

In addition to Thomas, the title character, there is Pixie, a worker at the jewel factory who journeys to Minneapolis to try to find her sister, Vera, who has disappeared. Pixie finds the low-life scum who are able to guide her to her sister's baby, and also help her make a few hundred dollars in a dive bar's underwater tank. Wood Mountain is a boxer being trained by Stack Barnes, and both of them are kinda sorta in love with Pixie.

And yet, Erdrich makes it all work with her poetic language, her inclusion of Chippewa religion and rituals, and her storytelling gifts that help the tales of these widely different people all resonate for a long, long while. show less