Renowned and brilliant author, both for her personal and literary trajectory; a woman of great preparation and creativity, awarded on multiple occasions with prizes of the importance of the Pulitzer Prize, the American Book Award, the National Book Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the Owen Wister Award.
Once again, Louise Erdrich places us before a theme that defines her: Native Americans, specifically the Ojibwa people of the northern Midwest. The protagonist is a character in whom we might perhaps recognize something autobiographical, and she impresses with the strong, harsh, and sincere strokes of her personality and story. The narration captivates at first, and the reader expects a trajectory that shifts —from violent and almost savage drama— to a mischievous and playful homage to the Anglo-Saxon ghost story. The narrative is sprinkled with a recurring and excessive use of marital relationships (perhaps with good intentions, but adding nothing to the authentic love that exists in them) and could have been addressed in a less crude way.
Nevertheless, it remains a courageous look at how we have faced pain, fear, injustice, illness, or the wounds we receive. The action is set in a globally remembered circumstance: the COVID-19 pandemic and the collateral damage of systemic, endemic, and cultivated racism, which culminated in the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement.
All of this is wrapped in the mystery of a ghost in an independent bookstore in Minneapolis, deceased on All Souls’ Day and reluctant to leave her favorite store. It is Tookie, newly married to the police officer who arrested and jailed her, who must resolve the mystery of the curse that seems to weigh on the place. A brilliant novel by a remarkable woman, in which Catholic spiritual formation converges with the imperative of her tribal origins. At times, it navigates—sometimes awkwardly—between spirituality and animism, between the defense of family and friendship, and a magical realism reminiscent of García Márquez, although her imprint recalls more Faulkner or O’Connor.