The Round House won the National Book Award for fiction.
One of the most revered novelists of our time--a brilliant chronicler of Native-American life--Louise Erdrich returns to the territory of her bestselling, Pulitzer Prize finalist The Plague of Doves with The Round House, transporting readers to the Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota. It is an exquisitely told story of a boy on the cusp of manhood who seeks justice and understanding in the wake of a terrible crime that upends and forever transforms his family.
Riveting and suspenseful, arguably the most accessible novel to date from the creator of Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, and The Bingo Palace, Erdrich's The Round House is a page-turning masterpiece of literary fiction--at once a powerful coming-of-age story, a mystery, and a tender, moving novel of family, history, and culture.
0
Fans of Erdrich will not be disappointed with this emotional, heart-rending story. Thirteen year-old Joe is the son of Antone Bazil, a local judge, and Geraldine Coutts, a woman who has been brutally attacked on the Ojibwe Reservation in North Dakota. Details are slow to surface as Joe tries to piece together the motivation for the crime against his mother. Confused by the failures of the justice system-competing jurisdictions and conflicting treaties-Joe enlists his friends to help investigate. Ostensibly, The Round House is a mystery, but it's also a deep and insightful portrait of a young man coming of age in a tribal community. Layered in identity, culture and tradition, Joe confronts his own disillusionment and formulates a plan that is as shocking as it is sympathetic. With urgent, lyrical prose, this is the kind of novel that reverberates with truth and inspiration long after you've finished reading it.
HPB Staff Review