Multi-award winning indigenous American author Louise Erdrich has set her new novel The Mighty Red in the heartlands of the Ojibwe people (Erdrich herself is a member of the Turtle Band, a tribe of the Ojibwe). Set on the banks of the Red River in North Dakota, country used for growing sugarbeet but also subject to fracking, The Mighty Red is a multilayered story that shifts effortlessly from a teen love triangle to the 2008 financial crisis to environmental concerns to tragedy through a wide cast of very human characters.
The Mighty Red opens in 2008 with Crystal, an Ojibwe woman who works night shift, driving sugarbeets to the processing plant. Crystal’s teenage daughter Kismet is saving up for college but finds herself swept into marriage with local jock Gary, who’s family runs one of the big beet farms, and who carries a dark secret. Despite her marriage, Kismet has stronger feelings for the bookish Hugo who ends up leaving town to seek his fortune on the fracking fields. Crystal’s life is thrown into disarray when her partner Martin absconds with the church development fund and she finds he has saddled her with a new mortgage.
This summary does not begin to cover the range of characters or situations in The Mighty Red. Erdrich brings the whole town to life through short chapters from multiple points of view including Gary’s parents, his best friend Eric, Hugo’s parents – bookshop owner Bev and organic farmer Ichor – and a huge range of others. Erdrich deeply is interested in the lives of these people, how they relate to and support each other, even when they disagree, how they make and live with good and bad decisions and how they strive and struggle. Erdrich also explores the wider pressures on these characters – such as the 2008 financial crisis and the impact of agribusinesses on farmers and farming.
Erdrich is interested in the landscape and the impact on it of people, of agriculture and mining. At one point in the narrative Erdrich describes a buffalo migration from the 19th century which lasted three days. At others she illuminates the role of big agribusinesses putting a stranglehold on farmers to use their patented, insecticide resistant seeds and then the impact of insecticides. But she also has characters who want to return to a more natural mode of farming, that is more in harmony with nature.
The Mighty Red is another masterpiece from Erdrich. Her characters are rich and recognisably flawed and produce a drama that is in turns comic and tragic always feels true. She displays a deep love of the landscape, its richness and its potential. And there is just a little bit of magic, or at least spiritualism, flagged by a very early piece on guardian angels. In pulling all of this together, Erdrich earns an ending that possibly involves a little more wishful or positive thinking than readers might have expected but will relish.
Robert Goodman
For more of Robert’s reviews, visit his blog Pile By the Bed
Other reviews you might enjoy:
- Tom Lake (Ann Patchett) – book review
- Small Mercies (Richard Anderson) – book review
- Like Mother (Cassandra Austin) – book review
Robert Goodman is a book reviewer, former Ned Kelly Awards judge and institutionalised public servant based in Sydney. This and over 450 more book reviews can be found on his website Pile By the Bed.
