I knew to expect greatness from Louise Erdrich, but really went into The Round House without knowing what to expect. What an impressive and impactful novel! This story follows twelve-year-old Joe as he struggles to deal with his mother’s experience of assault and subsequent PTSD and his father’s attempts to hold the family together. Joe, with the earnestness and risk-taking perhaps only possible in a young teen, tries to figure out who harmed his mother, and why, with the help of his friends.
Joe’s father is a lawyer, and his experience and patient support help Joe (and the reader) see just how many loopholes there are in the way the law treats Native Americans. For instance, if they don’t know exactly where the crime took place, on tribal land or otherwise, and so it’s impossible to determine under what law to prosecute. The justice they seek seems impossible to find, by design.
Erdrich shows just how dangerous life is for Indigenous women, which hits home through Joe’s eyes. He earnestly wants to figure out the world and his place in it, and this level on injustice complicates everything he thinks he knows. I was impressed, throughout, at how *teenagery* he is—Erdrich masterfully shows him at his best and his worst as he struggles with seeing his mother’s pain, his father’s helplessness, and his own need of their support, regardless. This is an incredible coming of age story and an indictment of the structures that support and sustain violence against Indigenous peoples, especially women.
Allongé 