The Sentence by Louise Erdrich - 2021 - 387 Pages - A Novel

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich - 2021 - 387 Pages - A Novel

Buried in Print on Louise Erdrich

Birchbark Books- owned by Louise Erdrich. 

Best Bio of Author I could find. On The Poetry Foundation 

Back in July of 2014 I read “Nero” by Louise Erdrich.  It won the O. Henry Award for best short story that year.  Seven years it took me to read another of her works, The  Night Watchman, the 2021 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Fiction.

The Night Watchman is based on the author’s grandfather who worked as a night watchman while working to prevent Native Americans Chippewas from being dispossed from land they long lived on.  The Bureau of Indian Affairs, a Federal agency, was in charge of whether or not a linked group of Native Americans should be designated a tribe.  Losing that designation meant loss of reservations rights and government help.

As The Sentence begins, Tookie has just been sentenced to sixty years in prison for stealing a truck to take the body of the ex-lover of a close friend from the apartment where he died.  Unbenownst to Tookie, there were drugs hidden on the body.  Tookie, a Native American, knows that Native Americans often receive very harsh sentences.

While in prison books are her refuge, her salvation. Thanks to the tireless work of her Defense attorney gets her released after only a few years.  The time then is 2015, the place is Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Tookie finds a job in a Bookstore with a focus on Native Americans.  She loves her job and Marries a tribal policeman.  It turns out the store is haunted by Flora a deceased customer, visting daily just as she did when alive. Flora was a White woman who was obsessed with her imaginary Native American heritage.  

There are lots of wonderful references to books sold, to those read by Tookie, other employees and customers.

The Covid Pandemic begins, George Floyd is killed by the Police.  Tootie and her husband are sucked in a vortex of danger, fear of the unknown.  There are no vaccines yet, no one understands the virus, how to be safe.

There are lots of interesting characters.  There is even a list of works mentioned.  

I greatly enjoyed The Sentence.  As my Understanding The significance of the title imcressed I think, I saw a bit deeper into this marvelous book.

Mel Ulm

 

The Night Watchman- A Novel- by Louise Erdrich - 2020- 397 pages- 2021 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Fiction

 The Night Watchman- A Novel- by Louise Erdrich - 2020- 397 pages- 

2021 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Fiction

Buried in Print on Louise Erdrich

Birchbark Books- owned by Louise Erdrich. 

Best Bio of Author I could find. On The Poetry Foundation 

Back in July of 2014 I read “Nero” by Louise Erdrich.  It won the O. Henry Award for best short story that year.  Seven years it took me to read another of her works, The  Night Watchman, the 2021 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Fiction.

It is gratifying to start September with such a powerful novel.

The Night Watchman is based on the author’s grandfather who worked as a night watchman while working to prevent Native Americans Chippewas from being dispossed from land they long lived on.  The Bureau of Indian Affairs, a Federal agency, was in charge of whether or not a linked group of Native Americans should be designated a tribe.  Losing that designation meant loss of reservations rights and government help.

It is 1953, powerful men  in the American Congress want abolished the  treaty given rights of the Chippewas and other groups, a potential disaster.

The novel focuses on Pixie Paranteau, a high School Valedictorian, granddaughter of Thomas, thd night watchman.  Most of her female fellow graduates quickly marry and have children. Pixie, she prefers to be called Patrice, does not want to be tied down.  She has a job at a bearing plant.  She supports her mother and younger brother.  Her alcoholic  father periodically returns home to terrorize his wife and try to bully Patrice out of money.

There is a large cast of characters.  Vera, Patrice’s sister, moved to Minneapolis several months ago and has not been heard from in a long time.  Minneapolis is pictured as a potentially dangerous big city.  Vera takes a week leave to look for her.  She gets involved in a strange job playing an ox in a bar where she is exploited and at risk for being forced into prostitution.

Thomas and Patrice live in this impoverished reservation community along with young Chippewa boxer Wood Mountain and his mother Juggie Blue, her niece and Patrice’s best friend Valentine, and Stack Barnes, the white high school math teacher and boxing coach who is hopelessly in love with Patrice.

Watching Thomas testify in Congress was a wonderfully rendered very important part of the novel.

“In the Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich creates a fictional world populated with memorable characters who are forced to grapple with the worst and best impulses of human nature. Illuminating the loves and lives, the desires and ambitions of these characters with compassion, wit, and intelligence, The Night Watchman is a majestic work of fiction from this revered cultural treasure”. From Harper and Row

I am so glad I read The Night Watchman.

"Nero" by Louise Erdrich - The 2014 O Henry Prize Story

I was recently very happy when I was given an advance review copy of the O Henry Prize Stories 2014 anthology.  To be included in the collection is a great honor.  The anthology and the award was first given in 1919 in honor of the great American short story writer, O Henry.  Past winners of the award are among  the elite of American and Canadian writers.  To be elgible for consideration a short story must have first been published, in English, in an American or Canadian publication.  The stories are read blind by a distinguished panel of judges.   There are twenty stories in this years anthology.

Louise Erdrich (1954, Minnesota, USA) won this year for her story "Nero".  Nero is a massive guard dog that patrols a shop and yard at night. The owners live in a house connected to the shop.  He is a vicious brute.  The story is told in the first person by a young girl who was sent to live with her grandparents for a few weeks when her mother had a baby. Her grandmother, a Polish immigrant, runs the shop and the family.  Her uncle Jurgen also lives and works there.  The girl is kind of excited to be without strict supervision and trys to get to know Nero.  He has learned how to climb over a seven foot fence and is in lust for a neighbor's cocker spaniel.  The girl begins to toss ginger snap cookies to 

Nero, his first human connections.  

The plot action of the story turns on Uncle Jurgen's romance with the book keeper for the business.  Her father, a widower, and the twenty five year old woman live together.  He starts a fight with any man who courts her.  There is also a very interesting interlude centering on an exotic animal show. I will leave most of the plot untold.

The feel of the story is 1930s to  1950s Midwestern USA.   The characters are a bit southern Gothic in style.  

"Nero" was first published in The New Yorker in 2013.

You can learn a lot more about Louise Erdrich in her Paris Review interview.

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6055/the-art-of-fiction-no-208-louise-erdrich

Please share your experience with Louise Erdrich with us.

Mel u