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Book summary and reviews of The Porcupine Year by Louise Erdrich

The Porcupine Year by Louise Erdrich

The Porcupine Year

by Louise Erdrich

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  • Published:
  • Sep 2008
    208 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

When Omakayas is twelve winters old, she and her family set off on a harrowing journey. They travel by canoe westward from the shores of Lake Superior along the rivers of northern Minnesota, in search of a new home. While the family has prepared well, unexpected danger, enemies, and hardships will push them to the brink of survival. Omakayas continues to learn from the land and the spirits around her, and she discovers that no matter where she is, or how she is living, she has the one thing she needs to carry her through.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"This story is interesting reading and provides a realistic look at the lives of the Ojibwe." - Children's Literature.

"Starred Review. The journey is even gently funny-Omakayas's brother spends much of the year with a porcupine on his head. Charming and enlightening." - Kirkus Review.

"Starred Review. The struggle to survive provides the exciting action in this sequel to The Birchbark House (1999) and The Game of Silence (2005), which takes place in 1852." - Booklist.

This information about The Porcupine Year was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Write your own reviewwrite your own review

kera

porcupine year
The porcupine year is an amazing book; once you start reading it you can't put it down!

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Author Information

Louise Erdrich Author Biography

Photo: Hilary Abe

Louise Erdrich is the author of fifteen novels as well as volumes of poetry, children's books, short stories, and a memoir of early motherhood. Her novel The Round House won the National Book Award for Fiction. The Plague of Doves won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and her debut novel, Love Medicine, was the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. Erdrich has received the Library of Congress Prize in American Fiction, the prestigious PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. She lives in Minnesota with her daughters and is the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore.

Author Interview

Name Pronunciation
Louise Erdrich: er-drik (means rich earth)

Other books by Louise Erdrich at BookBrowse
  • The Sentence jacket
  • The Round House jacket

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