The Sentence by Louise Erdrich (Little Brown, $37.99)
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Reviewed by Louise Ward, Wardini Books
Tookie is a conundrum. At the start of this novel she commits a crime, for love, and gets herself imprisoned. Her sentence is to be incarcerated for 60 years. After 10 of those long, hardyears, during which she creates her mind's library and sinks deep in to her love of books, the whole story of the crime comes out and she is released. Her next journey begins when her old teacher gets her a job at Birchbark Books (the real-life bookshop of the author) and she meets the Tribal Cop (we're in Minnesota) who arrested her and marries him.
That's a lot going on for Tookie in the set-up to this epic and absorbing novel. The next big thing for Tookie is that the bookshop's most irritating customer, Flora, dies and becomes the bookshop's most irritating ghost. Add to this the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown, the murder of George Floyd and Tookie's strained relationship with her step-daughter and our hero has much to deal with.
The Sentence is about so many things. It's about the life-changing magic of reading, of bookshops, of being in that community. It's about Native American tradition, ceremonies, jingle dresses and frybread. It's about a country sliding backwards in its understanding of race. It's about one indigenous woman who has had a lifetime of trauma and is loved, loving, hard as nails and learning every day how to forgive, how to heal, how to be herself. It's also about a ghost, tethered for an unknown reason, searching for identity even after death.
There is much to love about this novel. It's a booklover's book, a story set within the rustling, paper dust scented aisles of a bookshop. The Sentence has so many qualities: it's funny, heart-warming, heartbreaking, life-affirming, informative. Such a treat.
