BookBrowse Reviews The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich

BookBrowse:

Louise Erdrich's latest novel is a patient, intense story of how people and communities grapple with unaddressed trauma.

Permit me to break the fourth wall. Like any good reviewer, I aim to analyze a book dispassionately, on its own terms. But personally, the true sign of a powerful work of fiction is if I dream about it—if I find myself in a character's shoes, feeling all the dread or confusion or exhilaration that they felt.

And that is exactly what happened with The Mighty Red, Louise Erdrich's latest novel. The action built slowly—Erdrich's specialty—until one night I awoke sweating and grasping for consciousness to escape the book's suffocatingly small town and its desperate personalities. This is a fundamentally human story, suffused with elements of the supernatural, resulting in something both relatable and fantastical—and moving enough to influence your subconsciousness.

The Mighty Red takes place from 2008 through the early 2010s, with the Great Recession as a backdrop and the rural Red River Valley in North Dakota as its setting. Casual high school lovers Kismet Poe and Gary Geist stumble into an ill-advised marriage immediately after graduation. Kismet is actually in love with someone else and isn't ready to commit to either man, but a family crisis and Gary's overwhelming desperation push her into the marriage.

She quickly realizes that she's become the supposed savior and linchpin of a family torn apart by a horrible tragedy that was in many ways Gary's fault. Not only does Kismet have no desire to play this role, but it's obvious that no one person can wipe away the trauma the way she wipes away months' worth of filth in her in-laws' neglected house. Practically held hostage by the family, Kismet begins to realize what she wants and what she truly values. The slow burn of her captivity with the Geists—and her making the best of it through cleaning, gardening, and learning the truth about the terrible accident that changed them—builds expertly and keeps the reader entranced.

Meanwhile, other narrative threads and perspectives are interwoven with Kismet's story. Kismet's wayward father is on a crime spree, robbing the town church's fundraising haul and a string of banks; left to clean up the mess, Kismet's mother tries to fend off foreclosure, bankruptcy, and the townspeople's suspicions that she's in on all of it. Kismet's true love, Hugo, heads to the oil fields and returns as a man with a career and a nest egg. The landscape surrounding everyone becomes increasingly barren, as pesticides on the Geists' farm kill all insects, birds, and wildlife, resulting in an arms race between herbicide-resistant weeds and ever-more-powerful chemicals (see Beyond the Book), and families throughout the town struggle to survive and adapt to this new reality.

Erdrich expertly switches between characters' perspectives and pulls the reader into their inner lives; the effect is never disorienting, but rather provides a 360-degree view of this insular community and its lightly magical realist world.

As the tension builds, the reader waits on edge of her seat for the characters to finally face their traumas, whether by confronting what happened the night of the tragedy or by reflecting on even earlier misfortunes and mistakes that led them to their current lives. As we watch their stories unfold, the Red River silently looms in the background as a source of pain, a recipient of pesticides, a regional water supply, and a purifying force all at once.

The Mighty Red bears many resemblances to Erdrich's earlier novels; scenes of overnight shifts in grueling workplace conditions are reminiscent of The Night Watchman, and the depressed, depopulated parts of North Dakota are familiar territory for her. But this story progresses with a momentum all its own. It is an intimate study of characters, with a dash of the thriller genre in the crime spree storyline—it frightens and excites, but never overly so. Above all, the novel explores what happens to individuals, families, and communities when trauma is buried, and what happens when it inevitably resurfaces.

This review first ran in the October 2, 2024 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.

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