Summary
The novel begins with a preface recounting the historic congressional bill, House Concurrent Resolution 108, which abrogates nation-to-nation treaties and ends all federal funding of Indian tribes, calling for the eventual termination of all tribes and immediate termination of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. The author, Louise Erdrich, writes that her grandfather, like the character Thomas Wazhashk, had tirelessly fought against this termination. While she explicitly names the book as a work of fiction, she also acknowledges that she has tried to be faithful to her grandfather’s “extraordinary life.” The next page is the date, September 1953, placing the novel within historical context.
We meet Thomas Wazhashk starting his shift as a night watchman at a jewel factory. His surname, Wazhashk, comes from the muskrat, a lowly but hardworking animal crucial to maintaining the survival of its ecosystem, a fitting namesake for Thomas as we later learn.
The narrative shifts from Thomas at his night shift to Patrice Paranteau, unwillingly known as “Pixie,” at work in a jewel bearing factory, where she has started working after graduating high school. She prefers Patrice over Pixie because it sounds more adult and suits her ambitions to rise in the world.
Patrice catches a ride to the factory with two other friends: Valentine Blue and Doris Lauder. Valentine ignores her when she arrives at work, chatting up Doris, who is white. She has forgotten to bake the dough in her bucket and thus just has raw dough for lunch, but is fed by the generous donations of her fellow workers. Valentine tries to insult her by claiming that she only ever brings lard bread for lunch, but Patrice knows everyone eats lard bread because everyone else on the reservation is poor too.
Patrice is the primary breadwinner in the family. Returning to the house, she creeps carefully to avoid attracting her father’s attention. Her father is an absent alcoholic who occasionally crashes the house and pesters his wife for money. They are ashamed of him, and Pixie misses her older sister, Vera, who used to make fun of everything and brighten the home, but who has given no updates since leaving for Minnesota, prompting concerns that she has disappeared. Pixie feels herself as a kind “skin tent” (20) shielding her family from her father, all while knowing how precarious their situation actually is.
Meanwhile, Thomas passes another lonely night as night watchman, which he spends writing letters, including to his son and daughter. He wakes up with no memory of having written any letter and realizes that he had been writing the letter in his sleep. He sees a young boy crouching outside but shakes his head and the boy disappears.
Thomas meets with a tribal judge, Moses Montrose, discussing a local situation between the police and a man, Eddy Mink, a drunk who has been stirring trouble. Thomas meets Eddy at a gas station, and Thomas gently encourages him to quit drinking. He returns home after work in the morning and greets his wife. They kiss and negotiate chores, with Rose agreeing to postpone laundry so that Thomas can sleep right away after his night shift. Thomas reflects on their marriage, spanning 33 years and counting, and reviews their old jackets and coats and the memories associated with them.
Lloyd Barnes is a non-Native man who left his boxing ambitions to become a boxing coach and math teacher, settling down on the reservation, partly because he has his eyes on Pixie. Barnes eats the cooking of Juggie, who works as the cook and caretaker for the schoolteachers, and whose son, Wood Mountain, is a boxing student of Barnes.
At the factory, Pixie receives a note from a co-worker, Betty Pye, who says that her cousin had seen Vera in the Cities and had written to Patrice. In the letter, the writer communicates that she had seen her sister and something was wrong with her. Vera was with a baby and wouldn’t talk to her. Pixie leaves the house and goes on a walk while thinking of Vera, her domestic projects, and her elegant style. She promises that she will find her.
Later, Thomas and his family all go driving to see a boxing match between Wood Mountain, Juggie’s son, and Joe Wobleszynski, another boxer from a local white settler family that maintains a rivalry with Wood Mountain’s family over land. As the sons of each family became boxers, the rivalry found a competitive outlet in boxing.
In the match, Wood Mountain proves to be the superior fighter and almost deals the final blow to Woblesynski, but the whistle is blown too soon, rattling Wood Mountain and cheating him of his momentum. He loses the match, and most of the Indian spectators leave dejected. On the drive back home, Thomas reflects on his adventures and difficulties that he and the father of Wood Mountain, Archille, had faced together, in particular, discrimination from white Americans, who had mistaken them for Mexicans and rounded them up with a truckload of other people and deported them across the border.
After receiving the letter, Pixie asks her boss for time off, but learns that she has only earned three days of sick leave, not enough time for her to travel to Minnesota and back. Taking more time off, however, would mean risking her job. Her friend, upon hearing Pixie’s dilemma, volunteers to give Pixie her three days of sick leave, which the boss agrees to, giving Pixie almost a week to travel and find her sister.
While riding with Doris, Pixie notes how good Doris’ perfume smells and wonders how she smells in comparison, thinking she could not compete with her perfume. The conversation turns to crushes, during which Pixie is taken by surprise that Doris, despite being a white girl, is envious of her and the amorous attention she receives from men.
Later, Pixie, now called Patrice by the narrator, is on the train for the first time, on her way to Minnesota. She rests her head on a napkin as she falls asleep in the window seat, lulled to sleep by the scent of her hair oil and the rhythmic swaying of the train.
The narrative shifts back to the Wazhashk family and their house. Rose, Thomas notes when he kisses her, smells like the ironing, which makes him reflect on her jealous attachment to the iron and her compulsive homemaking habits. They conduct their nightly routine and fall asleep. Thomas lays his hand on her, whispering, “My old girl.” He wakes after 11 o’clock at night, shutting off the alarm before it rings so as to not disturb Rose, and goes to work. He reviews the legal papers in his briefcase while munching on his sandwich and coffee for strength. The papers state that the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa has been targeted by the US Congress for emancipation. He dwells on the word “emancipation”—what it meant to be emancipated if they were not enslaved, but rather, emancipated from their Indian-ness. He learns that the government is trying to solve the “problem” of Indians by getting rid of them.
Analysis
The novel leads with history, the national history of the United States and the personal family history of Louis Erdrich, which are established as both motivation and material for the novel. From the beginning, Erdrich emphasizes that this novel is both a work of fiction and a commemoration of history and historical people. The commemoration is not based on pure facticity, however, but an attempt of “faithfulness” to the lives of the people of Turtle Mountain, most especially Erdrich’s grandfather, Patrick Gourneau.
History is recounted not through the acts of government, but through the daily rhythms of a community of people. The narrative is broken up in short, episodic sections that focus on different characters, although mostly hewing to the two primary protagonists, Thomas and Patrice. The narrative being told through a web of episodic narratives creates a sense of collectivity that is plural and unfolds over time. The relationships between characters are rarely explicitly stated, but rather indirectly referenced, assuming a prior knowledge that comes with a lived-in familiarity. By placing the reader in medias res, she is able to tell a story from within, centering the indigenous community of Turtle Mountain and dispelling the need to explicate itself to an external and colonial audience.
Poverty and alcoholism appear early and endemic within the novel. Incidents involving food, such as when Patrice accidentally brings unbaked lard dough to the factory for lunch and is teased by Doris, reveal the economic thinness of her daily life and the ways it structures her social relationships. The class dynamics are also racialized. Patrice repeatedly notes Doris Lauder’s whiteness and her perfumed scent, which, in Patrice’s mind, renders her more desirable as a lover to men and as a friend to women.
Her home life is weighed down with shame about her father, who is an alcoholic and occasionally crashes into the house demanding more money for drink, and their poverty. The imagery of Patrice as a “skin tent” stretched to the brink of tearing illustrates the bone-deep ways poverty has formed Patrice as a character to act not just as an individual but also as a kind of shelter for those around her. The importance of family, both biological and chosen, comes through in the text. Her love for her sister drives Patrice to risk her job and go to the Twin Cities to find her. Thomas’ and Rose’s love for each other and their family fuels their tireless work ethic. Family meaning and history is also communicated through clothes, particularly when, on page 27, Thomas describes a quilt that Rose has stitched from patches of old jackets and garments.
Despite the bleak material conditions in which the characters live, there is also a transcendent spirituality weaved into the descriptions. For example, Patrice, while running back home in the rain, stops and senses something “swirling and seething with energy” and feels her “spirit pour into the air like song” (51). These moments of spirituality allow for connections between people, such as between Patrice and her missing sister, and between living things, such as a human being and the stars, in a way that would otherwise be impossible.
