LindaJ^'s Reviews > The Sentence

4.5 rounded up to 5 stars

Louise Erdrich is a national treasure. She's one fine writer whose books have taught me much about the United States' indigenous peoples.

In this book, Erdrich includes herself as a minor character -- the woman named Louise, a well-known author, who owns a bookstore called The Birchbark in Minneapolis. The primary character is Tookie, an Ojibwe woman who loves books and works at The Birchbark. Tookie is a great character. She's quite complex. Her husband Pollux, a former police officer and the one who arrested Tookie after she transported a dead body over state lines, not knowing that there were drugs duct taped in his arm pits. Tookie was sentenced to 60 years and after a rocky start, she survives by reading. Her sentence is commuted after 7 years or so. Louise hires Tookie to sell books and sell she does. She has a book (or six) to recommend to every customer. There are regulars. One of whom is Flora, but we don't meet Flora until she's dead. But Flora has something to do even though she's dead. Flora haunts the bookstore, throwing books on the floor and trying in inhabit Tookie. One of Tookie's co-workers hears Flora moving around, so Tookie knows she's not going nuts.

Then Covid comes. The bookstore, while closed to browsing, becomes busier than ever. And then George Floyd is murdered in Minneapolis and millions watch the video and are enraged. There are marches and tear gas and beatings. Hetta, Pollux's niece and a new mother, marches and after the tear gas and rubber bullets demands the police be abolished. Pollux counters that without the police, the looting and burning will never stop.

And then Pollux gets Covid and is hospitalized. It is touch and go. Tookie sleeps many nights in the car in the hospital garage.

And then there is the leader whose words have plowed "false grooves into peoples' brains."

This is a very timely book. The first I've read that has addressed Covid as it has and is being experienced. There are some laughs, there are some tears, there is a lot of real life.

This book is one of those on the 2022 Women's Prize long list. It should make the short list.