The Round House; Still Relevant Today?

In the book The Round House, a story takes place on an Indian reservation in North Dakota. It follows a group of "tweenage" boys who work to gain justice for the main character Joe's mother who was violently raped by a white man who isn't from the reservation. Joe and his friends named Cappy, Angus, and Zack, who are all around age 13, act in typical ways for their age. They enjoy looking at girls, joking around, and making their own decisions. After the horrific event, Joe's mother, Geraldine, is left devastated and bedridden. Geraldine only lays in bed and refuses to talk to anyone for days. She leaves her husband Bazil, the reservation judge, and son Joe to keep the home running. After coming home from school one day, Joe describes how his home feels without the liveliness of his mother, "The air seemed hollow in the house, stale, strangely flat. I realized that this was because in the days since we'd found my mother sitting in the driveway, nobody had baked, fried, cooked, or in any way prepared food." (Erdrich 22). Joe comes to realize that it seems no one is fighting for his mother's justice, so he takes it upon himself.

The majority of the book follows Joe in his search for the perpetrator. His father Bazil is the judge on the reservation so Joe goes to him for a lot of information. Bazil also wants justice for his wife but is older and wise enough to understand that there are certain precautions that need to be taken when prosecuting a person who doesn't live on the reservation. Joe is also too young to realize that what he's searching for is vengeance and not justice. He brings his friends on many bike ride adventures in search of leads. Eventually, Joe became conscious of who harmed his mother he makes a plan to kill him. With the help of his four best friends, they did kill the man. The book ends with the four boys going on a car ride, drinking, and crashing the vehicle. One of the boys dies in the crash and with the loss of a childhood friend Joe is then hit with the realization that he is no longer a child.

The book The Round House was written by Louise Erdrich in 2012. That same year, the book won the very prestigious National Book Award for Fiction. Erdrich's The Round House was also named The Book of the Year by Amazon.com. The content of the book is still relevant today. With the recent #MeToo movement the book is relevant as ever. It also covers issues like mental health. Joe's mother becomes essentially catatonic after the incident and her response to being raped shows in an emotional way what rape can do to a family. The book is relevant from a cultural standpoint as well. Erdrich writes about the Catholic Church in the book in such a way that it shows the audience the Native American perspective on it. She even writes in a mission trip to the reservation that shows how much the Catholic Church is impeeding on the traditions of their culture. Additionally, the book gives insight into how difficult it is for Native Americans to prosecute someone who doesn't live on the reservation.

For a large portion of the book, we only see Joe's mother as being frail, lethargic, and always on edge. Joe and Bazil try to talk to her on multiple occasions about different things and she typically either didn't respond or said she was tired. On one particular day, Joe decided to go talk to his mother because he thought he was sure of who hurt her and he wanted to let her know he was going to get the bad man. Joe said;

I'll do it. There is nothing to stop me. I know who he is and I'm going after him. You can't stop me because you're here in bed. You can't get out. You're trapped in here. And it stinks. Do you know it stinks in here? I went over to the window and was about to pull the shade up when my mother spoke to me. What I mean is, my before-mother, the one who could tell me what to do, she spoke to me. Stop that Joe" then she said "Now you listen to me, Joe. You will not badger or harass me. You will leave me to think the way I want to think, here. I have to heal any way I can. You will stop asking questions and you will not give me any worry. You will not go after him. You will not terrify me, Joe. I've had enough fear for my whole life. You will not add to my fear. You will not add to my sorrows. You will not be part of this. (Erdrich 89-90)

At the beginning of the book, Joe describes his mother before the incident as beautiful, smart, a great mother, and a great worker. Up until this point in the book, the reader hasn't seen her in this way. She spoke to Joe authoritatively, and for the first time in the novel, she was in charge. Joe was taken aback by this. He wants so badly for his mother to get better and go back to the way she was before the incident and he thought that by telling her he is going to go out and get the perpetrator he would make her happy.

Joe, Cappy, Angus, and Zach remain great friends throughout the entirety of the book. They know each other so well and stuck by each other through thick and thin. At the end of the book they all get in the car together with the intention of bringing justice to other people that were hurt by the same man that hurt Joe's mom. The boys all drink while in the car and eventually, they drift off the road and crash. Cappy was flung from the vehicle and was killed. Joe attempted to reflect on the incident while at the police station.

None of it do I remember. Except that again and again I looked at the round black stone that Cappy had given me, the thunderbird egg. And there was that moment when my mother and father walked in the door disguised as old people. (Erdrich 317).

One of Joe's best childhood friends passed away and this pushed Joe into realizing that he is no longer a child. He has aged and lost his sense of innocence. He noticed first that his parents have aged, and then he noticed that he himself had aged as well.

This book is thoroughly engaging. There are no boring pages. On many of the pages, there are multiple events happening simultaneously. This can be seen as both a positive and a negative as some may like a slower pace. Additionally, the book is well written and uses a vocabulary that teens and adults should be able to understand. It is written in the first person with Joe, the main character, as the narrator. This makes the reading easier and the reader is able to develop a bond with the narrator. However, there are parts of the story when another character has an important story to tell. In these parts, the story continues to be told in the first person, but whoever is telling the story becomes the narrator briefly. These occasional changes in narration help to keep the story interesting and allow for a change of pace.

Similarly to her characters in The Round House, Louise Erdrich herself identifies strongly as Anishinaabe. Due to her background, the glimpses of Native American culture we get through the book are likely accurate despite it being a fiction book. I would recommend this book to the type of person who is looking to read something engaging and controversial. This isn't the sort of book one would pick up to escape and it isn't the happiest of books. It is a coming of age story that showcases some of the hardships faced by a fictional Native American family.