WINNER OF THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
WASHINGTON POST, AMAZON, NPR, CBS SUNDAY MORNING, KIRKUS, CHICAGO
PUBLIC LIBRARY, AND GOOD HOUSEKEEPING BEST BOOK OF 2020
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.
