History matters in Louise Erdrich\u2019s The Round House<\/i>, winner of the 2012 National Book Award for fiction. The reasons are simple: to be Native in the United States is to live always with the complexities of the past. Set on an imaginary North Dakota Ojibwe reservation, the story grows from the boyhood memories of the main narrator, Joe Coutts, an elderly tribal judge, as he recalls the brutal rape of his mother. Frustrated at the inability of tribal and state authorities to find his mother\u2019s assailant, Joe and his childhood friends launch their own investigation. Their pursuit for justice is the heart of the book. Yet The Round House<\/i> is more than a simple crime story. A rotating cast of Joe\u2019s family and friends, many of whom appear in her earlier books, deliver wry and often searing commentary on Native life. As in her previous novels, Erdrich, an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, has created art and not a lecture. The result is an imaginary world as authentic as any in American literature\u2014and as true to the legacies of our nation\u2019s past as any history text.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
History matters in Louise Erdrich\u2019s The Round House, winner of the 2012 National Book Award for fiction. The reasons are simple: to be Native in the United States is to live always with the complexities of the past. Set on an imaginary North Dakota Ojibwe reservation, the story grows from the boyhood memories of the … <\/p>\n