At Sara's Table

The Round House

by Louise Erdrich

My Rating: 4/5 Stars

Goodreads Synopsis: One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface as Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and thirteen-year-old son, Joe. In one day, Joe's life is irrevocably transformed. He tries to heal his mother, but she will not leave her bed and slips into an abyss of solitude. Increasingly alone, Joe finds himself thrust prematurely into an adult world for which he is ill prepared.

While his father, who is a tribal judge, endeavors to wrest justice from a situation that defies his efforts, Joe becomes frustrated with the official investigation and sets out with his trusted friends, Cappy, Zack, and Angus, to get some answers of his own. Their quest takes them first to the Round House, a sacred space and place of worship for the Ojibwe. And this is only the beginning.

My Thoughts:This story starts off with a brutal rape and assault of a mother, tearing a family apart. The main character is the son of the mother, Joe, and the reader sees through his eyes how the assault affects his mother, his father, himself, and the community. He relies on various family members and friends to help him find peace with what was done to his family.

The complexity of the plot astounded me. First, there were so many characters, which normally confuses me. However, Erdrich developed each character within the first few sentences of their introduction that I knew who they were. Partially based on stereotypes with their own little quirks to make them understood and unique, each character had a definite presence in the novel. There was the ex-marine who decided to become a priest and the aunt who was an ex-stripper from a bad home. There was also the Uncle who relied on alcohol and hit his ex-stripper that was not his actual wife. There was the father who was a judge and always looking to the legal aspect of the situation with his quirky fountain pen. Each character had enough "stereotype" that I could understand them, but they had their own little quirks about them that made them unique. 

There was the group of good boys with a hooligan side that were my favorites. Watching Joe and his relationship with Cappy blossom was my favorite part of the novel. They act like such good adolescent boys who are trying to cope with learning to be an adult. I respected that their friendship was so strong and that they watched over each other until the very end of the debacle. It restored peace of mind that even though there were bad things going on in Joe's world, he also had some very special.

I also loved the complexity of the plot. This novel was tying in both so many educational aspects of reservation life for Americans who know very little about being a Native American. This stretches from social aspects, such as the drinking and the way they spoke (no th's!), to the low economic status they have. Joe expresses how excited he was to have a grocery store on his reservation. Erdrich also discusses Native American law and has a note in the back with more details. It was educational as well as entertainment.

To top it off, there is even mystery involved as Joe and his father attempt to learn what the entire situation of the mother's assault was. Was it a random attack? Someone they knew? As the the novel read on, there were so many branches of the plot that once I thought I had something figured out, another detail entered and I had to start over again.

Overall, I loved reading this. I recommend it to all adult readers and I will be looking forward to reading more by Louise Erdrich!