Louise Erdrich - The Mighty Red

Set in the lonely east of North Dakota, The Mighty Red is an impressive novel that draws out the isolation of small town, rural America and casts it against the swirling realities of capitalist agriculture, ecological degradation and loneliness. Alongside this Louise Erdrich draws out a story of a local tragedy that has left the town's population scarred and desperate for love to heal their collective wounds.

The novel opens with Kismet Poe, named by a whimsical mother, who hopes that hear daughter will escape that confines of small town America. But Kismet is in love with the bookish romantic Hugo, while being heavily courted by the high school sports star, aspirant farmer Gary. Kismet is too kind to refuse Gary's marriage proposal, and the confines of American culture to restrictive for anyone, even the adults, to understand that youngsters don't need to get married to enjoy sex and love for their early years. As Kismet falls into a marriage she knows she doesn't want but cannot say no to, their wedding day is nearly ruined as Kismet's father absconds with the church renovation funds.

Kismet is now trapped, literally, by Gary's family. Stuck on a farm whose topsoil is vanishing before everyone's eyes. The neighbours are trying out new-fangled organic, no drill farming, but they're the weird ones. Preferring to grow food instead of the local sugar beet cash crop. Hugo leaves his bookshop (Erdrich's novels often seem to feature bookshops, presumably like her own in Minnesota) and heads to Williston to make his fortune in ND's gas fields. Fracking is booming.

Kismet has to escape, but doing so means learning what really happened at that town tragedy, whose participants seem to have sworn some sort of pact of silence. The cover-up needs to be uncovered - not for legal reasons, but so that everyone can move on.

Erdrich has constructed a lovely novel of humanity, youngster's trapped by their circumstances and isolation, and the inward looking life of the adults. The drugs, drink, poisoned air and rapacious capitalism that undermine any effort to be different - or indeed normal. Kismet's at the heart of this, her steely character surviving the twin buffeting of her father's betrayal, her new family life and a soulless marriage. Her escape is wonderful, as is her steadfastness. It's a beautiful book. Louise Erdrich has her finger very firmly on the pulse of America. It will be interesting to see what she writes in the coming years.

Related Reviews

Erdrich - The Sentence