The Night Watchman

The Night Watchman / Louise Erdrich
NY: HarperLuxe, c2020.
624 p.

I got this book from my library when it was first released, by reading the large print edition. And I'm glad I did, since my library closed shortly after that. I was really looking forward to this book, and it did not disappoint.

Erdrich has a quiet, methodical style, even when things are happening in her stories. I really enjoy her technique and the way she tells a story. Each of her books explores the lives of Indigenous women, and draws from her own life and identity. 

This book does so even more than most; it was inspired by the life of her grandfather, who fought for the survival of his tribe and their treaty rights in the face of an "emancipation bill" in the 50s, which sought to "free" Indigenous people -- basically to remove treaty rights so that the government could have all the land. Her grandfather won the fight. 

In this novel, Thomas Wazhushk, a night watchman at the local jewel bearing plant is tribal chairman and uses his boarding school education to fight for the Turtle Mountain band of Chippewa. Alongside this story, Erdrich includes the story of Thomas' niece Pixie Paranteau (who prefers to be called Patrice) and her missing sister Vera. 

Patrice is a smart girl, who wants more education and a life without a husband and children. She'd like to go to law school. She works at the jewel bearing plant, but takes some time off to go to the city to search for her older sister Vera, who'd moved there some time before and is now missing. Erdrich draws together the various dark elements of life in the "golden 50s", not so golden for anyone not white and suburban. In the city, Patrice finds drug use, prostitution, sexual violence, and more. She seems charmed though, and avoids it all for herself -- clever enough to take precautions even in her innocence, she escapes the job she'd started in a bar, finds Wood Mountain (a local boy who has followed her to the city), and together they try to track down Vera; they only find the child she's abandoned and take him home to the reservation. 

Patrice then accompanies the local contingent to Washington DC to argue against the Emancipation Bill. She is involved with all of the events of the story, and she's a strong and compelling character. She's determined, smart, hardworking, innocent, resilient and more in the face of all her personal troubles and the larger community issues. 

But all of the characters besides the main ones are also three dimensional and drawn fully. The relationships between the various families and individuals who live on the reservation are deep and tangled. The setting is rich and evocative, the writing is spare yet deeply engaging, the characters are fascinating, and the two plot lines weave around one another to explore the dangers and vicissitudes of Indigenous life in the 50s. However, both issues, of sexual violence and missing and murdered Indigenous women, and of the American government trying to dispossess treaty rights, are both ongoing today. Literally so; the current administration is trying to push through the same kind of emancipation bills right now. Erdrich's afterword is a strong statement on the status of Indigenous rights and Indigenous life throughout the last century and today. 

Nonetheless, the issues tackled in this story do not overwhelm the narrative itself. It's skillfully written, beautiful, and an essential read. Highly recommended.