Oct 14

Oct 14 The Mighty Red

About the book

Author: Louise Erdrich
Publisher: Harper

More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.

Buy and support indie bookstores (+ I earn a small commission):
Bookshop.org (print) | Libro.fm (audio)

My Review

Louise Erdrich’s novels have an approachability that can feel elusive among novels with such a high caliber of writing. It’s just good storytelling, and the characters step off the page and into your heart. The Mighty Red was no different.

The book is about a cast of characters from a sugar farming community living along the Red River in North Dakota during the Great Recession. It deals with themes like desperation, love, the particular challenges and entrapments women face in times of poverty, farming for the land’s future, the insidiousness of privilege, and more.

We spend almost the whole book building to a reveal; an event in the town’s recent past that nobody wants to dwell on too much. I had no idea how she was going to make it worth the buildup, but she absolutely did. My husband walked in to see my face so pale and stricken that he thought something real had gone wrong! It was a visceral punch in the gut for sure. It was like a literary version of a Jodi Picoult novel, and I 100% mean that as a compliment.

I’m eager for more folks to read this so we can discuss!