The Night Watchman

Summary (from the publisher): Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich’s  grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman.

Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a Chippewa Council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new “emancipation” bill on its way to the floor of the United States Congress. It is 1953 and he and the other council members know the bill isn’t about freedom; Congress is fed up with Indians. The bill is a “termination” that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity. How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native Americans “for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run”?

Since graduating high school, Pixie Paranteau has insisted that everyone call her Patrice. Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Patrice, the class valedictorian, has no desire to wear herself down with a husband and kids. She makes jewel bearings at the plant, a job that barely pays her enough to support her mother and brother. Patrice’s shameful alcoholic father returns home sporadically to terrorize his wife and children and bully her for money. But Patrice needs every penny to follow her beloved older sister, Vera, who moved to the big city of Minneapolis. Vera may have disappeared; she hasn’t been in touch in months, and is rumored to have had a baby. Determined to find Vera and her child, Patrice makes a fateful trip to Minnesota that introduces her to unexpected forms of exploitation and violence, and endangers her life.

Thomas and Patrice live in this impoverished reservation community along with young Chippewa boxer Wood Mountain and his mother Juggie Blue, her niece and Patrice’s best friend Valentine, and Stack Barnes, the white high school math teacher and boxing coach who is hopelessly in love with Patrice.

In the Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich creates a fictional world populated with memorable characters who are forced to grapple with the worst and best impulses of human nature. Illuminating the loves and lives, the desires and ambitions of these characters with compassion, wit, and intelligence, The Night Watchman is a majestic work of fiction from this revered cultural treasure.

Review: I received an advance reader's edition of this novel from HarperCollins. 

It is 1953 and Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the very first factory near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. To pass the hours, he spends time going over paperwork he receives as a Chippewa Council member relating to a new emancipation bill that threatens to terminate reservations and threatens the rights of Native Americans to their lands. Another resident of the reservation whose way of life is threatened is Pixie Paranteau, who since recently graduating from high school asks that everyone call her Patrice. Unlike many of her former classmates, Patrice doesn't want to burden herself with a husband and kids, but works hard to support her family with a job making jewel bearings at the plant. But her older sister Vera moved to Minneapolis and disappeared, leaving only rumors behind of a possible baby and Patrice is determined to find out what has happened to her. 

This beautifully written novel creates a fictional world full of memorable characters who are facing the very best and worst of human impulses. The harsh realities of America as experienced by Native Americans is all too evident in every scene, as the characters face discrimination, poverty, and much worse with little regard or care from the country in which they legally reside. Throughout, I was rooting for these characters to win against all odds: that Patrice would find her sister alive and whole, that Thomas would prevail and stay the bill that threatens to take away their homes, that the characters would carve out just enough to lift themselves out of the impoverished conditions in which they live.

I loved reading that this novel was inspired by the true story of the author's grandfather, who worked as a night watchman and did indeed fight the government in their pursuit to end reservation. Erdrich did an excellent job of breathing a life and soul into her characters and also at capturing the setting of generational poverty and the effects of deprivation on a people who continue to cling to remnants of their traditional culture and beliefs. For example, the Chippewa belief in the lingering spirits of those that have passed away was evident throughout: "She waited for a pulse of life. It was faint, fainter. His spirit quickly puddled at her ankles" (180). 

This was a unique book because most Native American novels focus on much earlier time periods and most stories of racial inequality set in the 1950s focus on African American struggles. Erdrich has hauntingly illustrated the lasting impacts of colonization of the Americas and how the reverberations are so clearly felt in the lives of these characters.

Stars: 4

Related Title: LaRose by Louise Erdrich