Book review: Pulitzer Prize-winning Louise Erdrich, most recently author of The Sentence and The Night Watchman, writes beautifully about the people of her North Dakota roots. Her characters, often of First Nations origin, are steeped in the environmental and spiritual ties of the “sun-scorched colours” of the landscape. The story’s inhabitants may have ordinary lives but they are made extraordinary through the skills of a master storyteller.
Kismet was named so by her mother Crystal in an attempt to “attract luck and a lightness of heart”, but in the hard years of 2008-09 in the Red River Valley the future is not looking rosy. Her parents wish a college education for her, but if there’s one thing Kismet Poe has acquired from her mother it is independence of mind. She is much loved by Crystal, a truck driver who covers 12-hour night shifts moving sugar beets from pile to plant. Her father Martin, an itinerant actor and teacher with “fading joie de vivre”, keeps a little distant from the mother-daughter closeness.
But Kismet is also loved by Gary Geist, a fellow student who fixates on her for a wife. Gary’s life has been a series of near-tragedies to the extent that his mother Winnie is convinced of the presence of a guardian angel. Most recently, an accident on Gary’s property has damaged his normally cocky and assured persona and he and Winnie are sure that Kismet, “a woman who knew how to use power tools, and who was quick on the uptake”, is the wife he needs, someone to calm his shaky ego. Crystal is not so sure and attempts to deter Kismet, but “being open to reason from a parent comes in slim windows that slam shut fast”. After much bumbling on Gary’s behalf, the wedding plans “had wrapped around Kismet strand by strand”.
Put out by these developing events is Hugo Dumach, also in awe of Kismet and already established in her life as a close friend. If the farm-owning Geists win her over, then Hugo, supported by his parents Ichor and Bev (of Bev’s Bookery), decides that he will have to leave home, find a lucrative job, and return with monetary wealth to win Kismet back.
Family relationships dominate – mothers are strong, empathetic and nurturing, fathers show their love in practical ways. Throughout the story, conversations are spiked with witty, gentle humour. Characters on the periphery provide wonderfully descriptive depth to the novel. Father Flirty, the local Catholic priest with his “closely clipped hair, receding in a perfect zig-zag, like a vampire’s”, Hugo’s sisters Gerta and Trudy “who fought like gladiators”, and Gary’s friend Eric, so moved to pity for Gary’s flailing wedding proposals that he suggests his own.
Such is the small-town setting of the families of a story of “the rattled, scratching, always-in-debt Americans”, centred in the wide-open spaces of the sugar-beet landscape. But this is a Louise Erdrich novel and not a simple story of love, desire and family ties. Layers build on layers as uncontrollable outside forces intrude into family life. The more expansive picture opens up themes of sustainable land-use and the protection of flora and fauna for future generations.
Kismet is the star, from her unconditional love for family and friends, to her evolving appreciation of nature in action as she experiences the epiphany of a sunset: “The sun was low and the light was a golden barge floating through the trees.” This is a beauty to be nurtured.
This Mighty Red, by Louise Erdrich (Hachette, $37.99), is out now.
