{"id":19441,"date":"2012-12-17T10:14:21","date_gmt":"2012-12-17T15:14:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookdragon.si.edu\/?p=19441"},"modified":"2018-09-30T12:51:23","modified_gmt":"2018-09-30T16:51:23","slug":"the-round-house-by-louise-erdrich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/the-round-house-by-louise-erdrich\/","title":{"rendered":"The Round House by Louise Erdrich"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Round<\/a>“Just yesterday a white guy asked me if I was a real Indian. No, I said, Columbus made a mistake. The Indians are in India.” Presented as humor during a community festival, the deep irony remains striking throughout Louise Erdrich’s award-winning, bestselling books that explore Native American identity and experiences, caught between tribal traditions and a labyrinthine non-Native system that continues to elide Native citizens of civil rights.<\/p>\n

Justice is at the heart of Erdrich’s latest,\u00a0The\u00a0<\/em>Round House<\/em>,\u00a0this year\u2019s National Book Award winner<\/a>. The second title in a planned trilogy that began with\u00a0The Plague of Doves<\/a><\/em>, (2009 Pulitzer finalist<\/a>), House<\/em> undoubtedly succeeds as a stand-alone volume. That said, characters in House<\/i> and\u00a0Plague<\/em> overlap and intertwine, and reading the titles sequentially amplifies the experience of both. Small phrases in\u00a0House<\/em>\u00a0such as “A local historian had dredged that up and proved it,” would not have nearly the significance (“rough justice,” an unfinished love story) without the back-story revealed in Plague.<\/em> [If you choose the audible route, although Gary Farmer reads evenly and admirably, to have Peter Francis James continue his narrating from\u00a0Plague<\/em> would surely have resulted in an even more resonating recitation.]\n

In House,\u00a0<\/em>Erdrich narrows her focus on\u00a0one of\u00a0Plague<\/em>‘s four narrators, Judge Antone Bazil Coutts, a man of the law whose wife has been gravely\u00a0violated. When Geraldine Coutts’ errand to retrieve a file from her office one Sunday has her still missing by the afternoon, the good judge and his son decide to go looking for her: “Women don’t realize how much store men set on the regularity of their habits,” observes 13-year-old Joe, also called “Oops” as he was a “surprise” in the late-in-life marriage of his parents. “Our pulse is set to theirs, and as always on a weekend afternoon, we were waiting for my mother to start us ticking away on the evening. And so, you see, her absence stopped time.”<\/p>\n

After borrowing a relative’s car to search around town, father and son finally find Geraldine in their own driveway, her hands still clutching the steering wheel. Her withdrawal into a silent, isolated world of her own will shatter the small family. Joe’s determination to somehow heal his mother \u2013 fueled and abetted by his (teenage-boy, testosterone-driven) best friends\u00a0\u2013 recognizes no limits. Twins separated at birth, a drowned doll full of wet bills, a priest who gives out\u00a0Dune<\/em>\u00a0in addition to the good book, a\u00a0Romeo-and-Juliet-like separation, all come together as young Joe works to restore his shattered family.<\/p>\n

Like its teenage narrator, Round House<\/em>\u00a0moves urgently, rarely pausing for breath. Once begun, the story barrels toward the conclusion, shocking and reassuring both. Grab hold: don’t miss this phenomenal ride.<\/p>\n

Readers<\/strong>: Adult<\/p>\n

Published<\/strong>: 2012<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Just yesterday a white guy asked me if I was a real Indian. No, I said, Columbus made a mistake. The Indians are in India.” Presented as humor during a community festival, the deep irony remains striking throughout Louise Erdrich’s award-winning, bestselling books that explore…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26914,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,81,6,404],"tags":[84,6608,58,10,11,1812,1803,212,216,39,1813,42,1806,44],"class_list":["post-19441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adult-readers","category-audio","category-fiction","category-native-american-first-nations","tag-betrayal","tag-bookdragon","tag-coming-of-age","tag-family","tag-friendship","tag-gary-farmer","tag-louise-erdrich","tag-murder","tag-mystery","tag-parent-child-relationship","tag-round-house","tag-series","tag-series-ojibwe-trilogy","tag-siblings"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Round House by Louise Erdrich - BookDragon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/the-round-house-by-louise-erdrich\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Round House by Louise Erdrich - BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"“Just yesterday a white guy asked me if I was a real Indian. 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