Review: The Justice Trilogy by Louise Erdrich

Back in the summer of 2016 my book group read and discussed The Round House by Louise Erdrich. It was the first Erdrich book I'd finished. Several years previously I had attempted to read Love Medicine (1984) but didn't make it to the end. The Round House, for contrast, I loved. In fact, everyone in the club loved it. We had a very spirited discussion and we still talk about the book occasionally when we discuss favorites. At the time of our reading The Round House we knew it was the 2012 National Book Award winner. We didn't know it was the second book in a loosely connected trilogy by Erdrich. Not until the same book club read another Erdrich novel, La Rose (2016), did I see a connection between the two books: justice -- revenge in one; forgiveness in the other. It wasn't until I was doing a bit of research on past Pulitzer Prize winners and finalists did I learn Erdrich's book The Plague of Doves (2008) was the first book in the Justice series. So now, taking a very circuitous route, I have finally finished all three and I'm ready to handle the task of reviewing the whole series.

The Plague of Doves (2008)

The unsolved murder of a farm family over fifty years ago still haunts the inhabitants of Pluto, North Dakota, a small, white community near an Ojibwe reservation. In retribution for the murders, other farmers of German descent, find three Indians and lynch them without a trial. To this day everyone is in agreement that the three men were not the murderers and the real culprit was never found nor brought to justice. There were two survivors of this event -- a baby girl found alive in her crib at the scene of the first murder, and Mooshum, an Indian teen who was cut down from the tree before he died. Later Mooshum, who was nearing the end of his life, told his granddaughter Evelina Harp what happened that terrible day. 

There are four narrators in The Plague of Doves (read by four voice actors in the audiobook): 1. Evelina, Mooshum's granddaughter. 2. Judge Brazil Coutts who has an affair with the woman who was once the surviving baby now grown-up; he eventually marries Geraldine, Evelina's aunt. 3. Marn Wolde is the daughter of a nearby farmer; she marries Billy, whose sister Maggie, has a child with the husband of Neve, another of Evelina's aunts. This baby, Corwin Peace, grows up to be Eveline's first love interest. 4. Dr. Cordelia Lochren the grown up 'surviving baby' (who has an affair with Brazil) later becomes best friends with Neve. I actually looked for a family tree on the Internet, because this tangle of people was so confusing to me. I can only imagine what you, dear reader, are thinking about this story right now. I'm sure it is mind-boggling to you. Just suffice it to say, that the indigenous and white members of this community have long been intermarrying and are all related to each other in some way or another. Each of the four narrators tell their stories which cements the idea of how tangled up their lives are with each other, both the families of the lynches men and the families of those who did the lynching. Bruce Barcott, writing for the NYT, wraps it up this way, "These folks don’t need closets to hold their skeletons, they need storage units."

Barcott goes on to say The Plague of Doves is about a community "maddeningly strangled by its own history." Which brings up the concept of justice. Can people really ever recover from a tragedy when they know the culprit(s) have never come to justice? How does a whole community find redemption from all the guilt they have experienced their whole lives?

My husband and I listened to the audiobook of The Plague of Doves together. Afterwards we sat down with a blank piece of paper and attempted to draw out a family tree showing the interrelationships between all the main (and a few of the side) characters.  Don was especially impressed by the intertwining stories and the ability Erdrich has to write such multilayered mythology.

My rating 4 stars.

The Round House (2012)

Over a decade has passed since the events of the first book. In The Round House Geraldine and Brazil Couts are home on a Sunday, when Geraldine, who manages tribal enrollment, receives a telephone call. She tells her thirteen-year-old son, Joe, she needs to go pick something up from the office. Hours later she returns and Joe's childhood life will never be the same. His mother has been raped and beaten. Nothing the boy does will bring back the idyllic "before" days and Joe becomes obsessed with finding out who did this thing to his mother. He wants to bring that person to justice. But justice to a kid looks a lot like vengeance and that is exactly what Joe and his friend, Cappy, set out to do.  And justice on a reservation doesn't look the same as it does in the rest of the country, where White men make the rules.

The novel, told through the eyes of a grown Joe looking back at himself as a boy, combines a coming-of-age story (think Stand By Me) with a crime and vengeance story while exploring Erdrich’s trademark themes: the struggle of Native Americans to maintain their identity; the legacy of the troubled, unequal relationship between Native Americans and European Americans, a relationship full of hatred but also mutual dependence; the role of the Catholic Church within a Native American community that has not entirely given up its own beliefs or spirituality. (Kirkus Reviews)

Like I said in my intro, The Round House was my first complete Erdrich book and I fell under the author's spell. Even though the summary is very depressing and the situation very dire, I remember there being many funny moments in the book. Laugh out loud funny. Mooshum, now claiming to be 112 years not only provides needed historical context but quite a bit of this humor. I also appreciated learning about the Ojibwe traditions around the round house. I had my eyes opened.

The Round House won the 2012 National Book Award. This is what the judges said about their selection, 

In this haunting, powerful novel, Erdrich tells the story of a family and community nearly undone by violence. Using the quiet, reflective voice of a young boy forced into an early adulthood following a brutal assault on his mother, Erdrich has created an intricately layered novel that not only untangles our nation’s history of moral and judicial failure, but also offers a portrait of a community sustained by its traditions, values, faith, and stories. (NBA)

After we finished the audiobook for The Plague of Doves, my husband expressed interest in reading the rest of the trilogy. I jumped at the idea and committed to listening to The Round House with him. Now to find the time.

My rating: 5 stars.

LaRose (2016)

The central question in LaRose by Louise Erdrich is: Can a person "do the worst thing possible and still be loved"?

Landreaux Iron does the worst thing. When he is out hunting one day, he accidentally hits and kills the young son, Dusty, of his best friend. Set in North Dakota on the Ojibwe Indian Reservation, Landreaux and his wife seek tribal remedies in a sweat lodge and by talking to their priest about ways to deal with their guilt. Ultimately they decide to give their son, LaRose, to Dusty's family following an ancient tradition as a way of seeking pardon. Dusty's parents, Nola and Peter Ravich, are obviously tentative in accepting another child as "payment" for their lost son but eventually find that LaRose does indeed fulfill a deep need for solace in their hearts.

LaRose, who is named for a long line of ancestors with the same name, is really a remarkable kid who seems to have an intuition what he needs to do to help both families heal from this horrible situation. He seems to be able to draw upon the strength and lessons learned from his previous namesakes, whom we meet in short, retrospective chapters.

In the hands of most authors LaRose would be a completely sentimental, sad book, but not in the very adept hands of Louise Erdrich. She understands how to tell a story which compels the reader to confront the situation at hand without being sappy. Along the way we even gain insights and knowledge about Native American culture and family structure.

While the first two books in the series on justice delve into the concepts of guilt and vengeance, LaRose addresses the concept of forgiveness and the wisdom behind Native justice practices. If possible I think I liked this book best of the three, but that may be only because I wrote a detailed review of it and published it here on my blog, (LeRose) so I may remember it best. Others in my book club did not feel the same way, complaining about all the mysticism in the stories. I tried to stick up for it and explain how magical realism is used to describe concepts. They were having none of it so I let it go. I also was the only one who listened to the book, so perhaps being immersed in the audio version helped me appreciate the story more. Anyway, keep this in mind if you are trying to decide if you want to read or listen to the book.

My rating: 5 stars.

As I was preparing myself to write about Louise Erdrich's Justice series, I kept running into references to a collection of essays compiled in a book titled Louise Erdrich's Justice Trilogy: Cultural and Critical Contexts edited by Connie A. Jacobs and Nancy J. Petersen. I haven't read it, and doubt I will as it seems like a book which may end up on a college class syllabus, but I thought I would mention it here. This is the synopsis:

Louise Erdrich is one of the most important, prolific, and widely read contemporary Indigenous writers. Here leading scholars analyze the three critically acclaimed recent novels-- The Plague of Doves (2008), The Round House (2012), and LaRose (2016)--that make up what has become known as Erdrich's "justice trilogy." Set in small towns and reservations of northern North Dakota, these three interwoven works bring together a vibrant cast of characters whose lives are shaped by history, identity, and community. Individually and collectively, the essays herein illuminate Erdrich's storytelling abilities; the complex relations among crime, punishment, and forgiveness that characterize her work; and the Anishinaabe contexts that underlie her presentation of character, conflict, and community. The volume also includes a reader's guide to each novel, a glossary, and an interview with Erdrich that will aid in readers' navigation of the justice novels. These timely, original, and compelling readings make a valuable contribution to Erdrich scholarship and, subsequently, to the study of Native literature and women's authorship as a whole.(Publisher)

If you haven't read, or even heard of, these wonderful book, this wonderful series, I hope my reviews will give you the little push you need to read them for yourself.

-Anne