The Night Watchman
Aug. 2nd, 2021 12:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ndrosenI have started reading Louise Erdrich’s The Night Watchman, the No Strings Attached book club’s latest selection, and I’ve been caught up in it. So far, we’ve met a number of characters, most of them (like the author) Turtle Mountain Chippewa, facing poverty on the reservation, and other human problems. The story is set back in the 1950s, when the federal government was trying to terminate its recognition of and treaty obligations to Indian tribes as such, and make the landholdings of the individual Indians salable. One of the characters, a night watchman and a tribal official, has read of the proposal, and does not like it.
The novel demands to be read, and I plan to read more when I can. Various stories of different families are braided into a whole, and it is notable that while the author sympathizes with her characters, some of whom command admiration, and has things to say about the historical mistreatment of the tribe, she does not make plaster saints of her Amerindian characters. There are drunks and mess-ups, and there is one character whose fate in the big city has not been revealed so far; she has fallen out of touch, and her sister has set out to find her.
The novel demands to be read, and I plan to read more when I can. Various stories of different families are braided into a whole, and it is notable that while the author sympathizes with her characters, some of whom command admiration, and has things to say about the historical mistreatment of the tribe, she does not make plaster saints of her Amerindian characters. There are drunks and mess-ups, and there is one character whose fate in the big city has not been revealed so far; she has fallen out of touch, and her sister has set out to find her.
