Louise Erdrich’s The
Round House is different from her usual use of multiple
narrators and magical happenings. The single narrator of this National
Book Award–winning novel is a 13-year-old boy. Joe. He and his parents,
tribal court judge Bazil Coutts and tribal enrollment clerk Geraldine
Coutts, live on the Ojibwe Reservation in North Dakota. As the book
opens, Geraldine has been raped near a sacred round house. Traumatized
and afraid, she only gradually reveals details that pinpoint the
rapist. When the man can’t be prosecuted because of a question about
jurisdiction, Joe takes it upon himself to get justice. The Round House is grounded in hard
realism: As Erdrich says in an afterword, one in three Native American
women are raped in their lifetimes, and 80 percent of the perpetrators
of rape on reservations are non–Native. Many of these crimes were not
prosecuted before the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010 because tribal
courts could only prosecute tribal members.
Along with being a gripping crime novel, The Round House is the story of
parents and children and a family’s shifting balance of responsibility
as a son faces heartbreak and an excruciating ethical choice. It is
also a story of teenage friendship and support. Native America legends
are significant, although Erdrich shies away from the magical elements
of her previous books. There are some great characters, especially
Joe’s feisty grandfather Mooshum, best friend Cappy, and, of course,
Joe himself, a good kid who becomes a man sooner than he wished for.
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