Category: Native American

With the skill of a Nobel laureate (the book won the 2012 National Book Award for Fiction), Erdrich tells one history wrapped in a second which is in turn enveloped by multiple additional narratives. Early in the narration by a 13-year-old Ojibwe boy, Joe Coutts, we learn that Joe’s mother, Geraldine, has been brutally raped. She survives but retreats into deep depression and silence, saying nothing about her attacker. Joe’s father, Bazil Coutts, a respected tribal judge, does his utmost to nurse his wife back to humanity, protect his son, and hunt for the attacker. Only, without the precise location...