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Keith Mosman: A Long(ish) List of Recent Short Story Collections (0 comment)
May is Short Story Month, so I’ll keep this brief: here is a list of the some of the collections that I’ve read in recent months (even though most of them weren’t officially dedicated to the form)...
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  • Renee Macalino Rutledge: Powell's Q&A: Renee Macalino Rutledge, author of 'One Hundred Percent Me' (0 comment)
  • Kelsey Ford: Celebrate Short Story Month: 7 Recommendations Based on 7 Collections We Love (0 comment)

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The Night Watchman

by Louise Erdrich
The Night Watchman

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ISBN13: 9780062671189
ISBN10: 0062671189
Condition: Standard
DustJacket: Standard

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Staff Pick

Even within Erdrich's superlative body of work, her newest, a tribute to her grandfather, truly shines. This book is perfect in every way — the characters, tone, pacing, and the WRITING... swoon! Her creativity and mastery of language are on full display, and it's mind-blowing. I loved every second of reading this! Recommended By Leah C., Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich's grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman.

Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a Chippewa Council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new "emancipation" bill on its way to the floor of the United States Congress. It is 1953 and he and the other council members know the bill isn't about freedom; Congress is fed up with Indians. The bill is a "termination" that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity. How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native Americans "for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run"?

Since graduating high school, Pixie Paranteau has insisted that everyone call her Patrice. Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Patrice, the class valedictorian, has no desire to wear herself down with a husband and kids. She makes jewel bearings at the plant, a job that barely pays her enough to support her mother and brother. Patrice's shameful alcoholic father returns home sporadically to terrorize his wife and children and bully her for money. But Patrice needs every penny to follow her beloved older sister, Vera, who moved to the big city of Minneapolis. Vera may have disappeared; she hasn't been in touch in months, and is rumored to have had a baby. Determined to find Vera and her child, Patrice makes a fateful trip to Minnesota that introduces her to unexpected forms of exploitation and violence, and endangers her life.

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.

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.

Review

"A spellbinding, reverent, and resplendent drama...A work of distinct luminosity...Through the personalities and predicaments of her many charismatic characters, and through rapturous descriptions of winter landscapes and steaming meals, sustaining humor and spiritual visitations, Erdrich traces the indelible traumas of racism and sexual violence and celebrates the vitality and depth of Chippewa life." Booklist (Starred Review)

Review

"In this kaleidoscopic story, the efforts of Native Americans to save their lands from being taken away by the U.S. government in the early 1950s come intimately, vividly to life...A knowing, loving evocation of people trying to survive with their personalities and traditions intact." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

Review

"The Night Watchman is above all a story of resilience...It is a story in which magic and harsh realities collide in a breathtaking, but ultimately satisfying way. Like those ancestors who linger in the shadows of the pages, the characters Erdrich has created will remain with the reader long after the book is closed." New York Journal of Books

About the Author

Louise Erdrich is the author of fifteen novels as well as volumes of poetry, children's books, short stories, and a memoir of early motherhood. Her novel The Round House won the National Book Award for Fiction. The Plague of Doves won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and her debut novel, Love Medicine, was the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. Erdrich has received the Library of Congress Prize in American Fiction, the prestigious PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. She lives in Minnesota with her daughters and is the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9780062671189
Binding:
Hardcover
Publication date:
03/03/2020
Publisher:
Harper
Language:
English
Pages:
464
Height:
1.80IN
Width:
6.30IN
Author:
Louise Erdrich

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$19.50
List Price:$28.99
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