“A
stunning and devastating tale of hate crimes and vengeance…Erdrich
covers a vast spectrum of history, cruel loss, and bracing realizations.
A preeminent tale in an essential American saga.” Booklist, starred review
One
Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North
Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface as
Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what
happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and
thirteen-year-old son, Joe. In one day, Joe's life is irrevocably
transformed. He tries to heal his mother, but she will not leave her bed
and slips into an abyss of solitude. Increasingly alone, Joe finds
himself thrust prematurely into an adult world for which he is ill
prepared.
Written
with undeniable urgency, and illuminating the harsh realities of
contemporary life in a community where Ojibwe and white live uneasily
together, The Round House
is a brilliant and entertaining novel, a masterpiece of literary
fiction. Louise Erdrich embraces tragedy, the comic, a spirit world very
much present in the lives of her all-too-human characters, and a tale
of injustice that is, unfortunately, an authentic reflection of what
happens in our own world today.
Louise
Erdrich is the author of thirteen novels as well as volumes of poetry,
short stories, children's books, and a memoir of early motherhood. Her
novel Love Medicine won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse was a finalist for the National Book Award. Most recently, The Plague of Doves
won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer
Prize. Louise Erdrich lives in Minnesota and is the owner of Birchbark
Books, an independent bookstore
“A
stunning and devastating tale of hate crimes and vengeance…Erdrich
covers a vast spectrum of history, cruel loss, and bracing realizations.
A preeminent tale in an essential American saga.” 
