The Sentence

 I have started but never finished a book by Pulitzer Prize-winner Louise Erdrich, and I almost didn't read this one because the opening pages described such dysfunctional people and crazy situations that I just didn't want to deal with it. But I persisted and I really loved this book. Louise Erdrich actually owns an independent bookstore in Minneapolis called Birchbark Books, and this story is set largely in and around a small independent bookstore in Minneapolis in the year of George Floyd's murder and the beginning of the pandemic. Thus, it also deals with the resultant riots in Minneapolis and other cities which--once again--protested the murders of Black men by police officers. This focus, even though the protagonist and some of the other major characters are Native Americans, recognizes the common thread of nearly genocidal treatment of people of color throughout American history.  As I have said in other posts, character is important to me. I have to like somebody in the book enough to care what happens and I really liked Tookie, an Ojibwe woman imprisoned for 10 years after being set up by her "friends" to take the fall for transporting drugs across state lines--in a dead body. Tookie tells us that "the most important skill I'd gained in prison was how to read with murderous attention." When Tookie is released, a former teacher gets her a job in the bookstore and we are immersed in literature and it's healing and redemptive powers. Tookie's post-prison life is not without challenges, but she is now married to the former tribal police officer who arrested her and she has a stable loving relationship with him and a strong network of co-workers and friends. When one of the most annoying bookstore customers dies, she comes back to haunt the bookstore and Tookie in particular. We don't find out why until the very end. So, love letter to books, a life redeemed, a ghost story, a love story, an indictment of systemic racism...there's a lot packed in here. So worth the read.

Booklist calls the book "funny, evocative, painful, and redemptive." NPR includes this book in a group of recent publications  "that tries to capture a splintering America during this long pandemic moment." The Guardian provides a glowing review. The New York Times calls the book "strange, enchanting and funny." Kirkus' pithy review says the novel "reckons with ghosts—of both specific people and also the shadows resulting from America’s violent, dark habits."