The Round House

This gripping novel tells a story that reveals the deep and complex effects of gender-based violence on generations of a family.

I found it fascinating and unusual to consider an adolescent boy's reaction to gender-based violence another male committed against his mother.  The book wraps themes of justice, discrimination, and Native American traditions around a brilliant exploration of how trauma ripples through a whole community and explores what it takes for humans to heal.

Erdich's insights into the complexity of life on a North Dakotan reservation are provocative, educational, and lyrically written, taking us to a place not many outsiders… show more.

The Round House by Anishinaabe novelist Louise Erdrich, which won the National Book Award in 2012, makes it clear why federal Indian law cannot deliver justice to Indian country.

It does this skillfully by constructing a plot in which rape of and murder by a white man of Native women on an Ojibway reservation impacts the lives of a tribal judge, his wife (the victim of the rape), and their 13yr. old son, who narrates the story as an adult who has become a tribal judge himself.

I value this book because it is both didactic (it teaches one about… show more.

I had not read Louise Erdrich in many years when I picked up this book, but I was especially interested as it addresses violence against Indigenous women, an all-too-common reality rarely reported in the mainstream. The author makes a fascinating choice: to tell the story from the perspective of the victim’s thirteen-year-old son. On the reservation, where intersecting law and law enforcement—federal, state, and tribal—only leads to massive injustice, the boy takes matters into his own hands, as investigator, prosecutor, and judge. Erdrich goes there for a shocking climax, and perhaps an even more riveting denouement. A visionary examination… show more.

Louise Erdrich creates an aura of spiritual powers within the sacred space that is the Round House, place of worship for the Ojibwe. Here, thirteen-year-old Joe finds the courage, wisdom, and strength to set out on a path to seek justice for his mother and redemption for himself. The story is a quest for understanding within the traumatic lives and feeling of hopelessness that surround the boy and his people, the focus is a mystery he is driven to solve. Louise’s writing establishes a sense of mysticism and deep timelessness that emanates from the Round House and wisps throughout the… show more.

Winner of the National Book Award, this book is a searing indictment of how white America’s abuse of Indigenous People continues into the present day. When a white man attacks Geraldine Coutts on the reservation, the law can do nothing. The tribal police have no power over outsiders, and white law does not apply on the rez. Geraldine’s thirteen-year-old son, Joe, joins his friends to investigate the attack and seek justice. His ultimate decision feels both surprising and inevitable, as the best endings do. Erdrich is one of my favorite writers, and in this book, she is at the height… show more.