Frank H. (perryfran) reviewed on 3/31/2025 + 1250 more book reviews

I have read several of Erdrich's novels including her 2021 Pulitzer Prize winning The Night Watchman and always find them to be vivid portrayals of Native American life. The Round House is in my opinion one of her best. It won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2012 and follows the story of 13-year-old Native American Joe Coutts whose mother Geraldine is brutally attacked and raped in 1988 on an Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota. Geraldine is in shock and is very reluctant to tell what happened to the police or her family. Her husband, Bazil, is a tribal judge who uses his past experience and cases to try to determine who the perpetrator may be. But Joe becomes frustrated with the investigation and sets out to get his own answers along with his friends, Cappy, Zack, and Angus.

The novel is a coming of age story involving Joe and his friends as they try to determine the events of Geraldine's attack. The novel is also full of memorable characters ranging from the bad to the spiritual to the comical. Mooshum is an elder of the tribe who tells stories of the Ojibwe including some while he is sleeping. Linda Wishkob was born as a twin with a birth deformity whose white parents didn't want her so she was adopted by an Indian family and who later donates a kidney to save the life of her despicable brother. Then there are the elder women including Grandma Ignatia who are full of humor and bawdy tales of sex. And Joe's Uncle Whitey, the owner of a gas station whose parter Sonja is a former stripper who Joe is very attracted to and who treats him like a son.

But the main focus of the novel is indigenous reservation judicial law which hinders justice because tribal governments can't prosecute non-Indians who commit crimes on their land. In the afterword to the novel Erdrich states "this book is set in 1988, but the tangle of laws that hinder prosecution of rape cases on many reservations still exists. . . 1 in 3 Native women will be raped in her lifetime; 86 percent of rapes and sexual assaults upon Native women are perpetrated by non-Native men; few are prosecuted."

This was overall a very powerful novel and at the same time it was very readable. It was insightful and compelling in its plea for justice for Native women. It also was a good coming of age story as well as providing insights into Ojibwe folklore. I'll be looking forward to reading more of Erdrich.

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