Who is a Native American? What does it mean to be a member of a Native American tribe? What to men of the tribe owe the women, and vice versa? If the Constitution doesn’t apply to them, as it didn’t for much of the history of the United States, do Native Americans have inalienable rights? Or can the American government chip away at their sovereignty until there’s nothing left? Louise Erdrich wrestles with all of these questions and more in The Night Watchman. Like many of her previous novels, this book jumps from character to character on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in North Dakota to create a group portrait of people living in the shadow of personal and tribal history.

The Night Watchman takes us back to 1953 and 1954, and primarily follows two characters. First, we meet Thomas Wazhushk during one of his shifts as a night watchman at a jewel bearing plant. It’s a good job, but Thomas uses the time between the patrols to do work that he thinks is more important: helping the Turtle Mountain band of the Chippewa survive. Second, Patrice Paranteau offers us a view into life in one of the poorest family’s on the reservation. While the Wazhushk family seem to be getting on fairly well, comparatively, the Paranteaus live in a tar paper house and eat whatever Patrice’s mother can grow and forage. Patrice’s job at the jewel bearing plant is the only thing bringing in money. These two characters, paired with the perspectives of a White teacher at the local school, a young man who has a crush on Patrice, Patrice’s alcoholic father, a mixed-race woman who became an academic, and a few others, serve as spaces for Erdrich to meditate on identity, duty, and other ideas—although I want to be clear that Erdrich’s characters are all fully realized.

The night that we meet Thomas comes shortly after he learns that Congress is about to visit one more indignity upon his people. Within twelve months, Congress plans to pass a termination bill for the Chippewa. This bill will strip the tribe of federal recognition; invalidate all treaties; break up the reservation; and divest the federal government of all social, medical, educational, and financial support for the tribe. (It really helped to have recently read Ada Deer’s account of her own tribe’s fight with termination, over at LitHub, before I read this book. Erdrich is clear, but a little light on historical detail.) Congress is trying to sell termination as a way to make the Chippewa into “real” Americans. Thomas and his fellow elders intend to fight termination to the last. Congress and White people have taken just about everything else; they are not going to be allowed to take away the Chippewa’s identity.

Meanwhile, Patrice is growing up quickly. To be honest, Patrice never really got much of a chance to be a child, with an alcoholic father and a mother doing everything she could to keep them alive. As the sole breadwinner, Patrice doesn’t have much time for either her quest to find her missing sister or deal with the longings of two young(ish) men who want her. Thomas’ chapters show us the macro view of survival at Turtle Mountain. Patrice’s chapters are a lot closer to the bone.

All this may sound grim—and a lot of is—but one of the things I like about Erdrich is that she always has comic relief in her novels. Some of that humor comes from older characters talking about sex; the old people in Erdrich’s novels always make me cackle. A lot of the humor in this book comes from the experiences of two hapless Mormon missionaries who are on the reservation to covert that Lamanites. (In another stroke of serendipity, living in Utah has made it easy for me to find people who will translate LDS-ese for me. I would recommend some background reading* to fully understand what’s going on with these characters.) I laughed out loud when the missionaries introduced themselves to tribal elders as “elders”–male missionaries call themselves this, even though they’re usually in their late teens or early twenties. I could just see the eyebrows going up. I also had to laugh at some of Thomas’ thoughts about the, um, origin story of the LDS faith. The people who sent those missionaries should have known better than to try and sell their story to a people who are master story-tellers.

The Night Watchman is not my favorite of Erdrich’s novels. (The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse is my favorite, with The Round House a close second.) It was a little too muddled for me. Erdrich built this book by blending her own family history with research she had done on the termination policy. Consequently, I think, The Night Watchman just tries to do too much while trying to argue its thesis. I tend to enjoy Erdrich’s novels more when they are more tightly focused on a character (like the ones I mentioned) or when they are much more diffuse, and just tell stories about characters that share a place and a time. Although this is not my favorite book in Erdrich’s oeuvre, I really enjoyed the characters, the pathos of their fights, the humor, and the supernatural notes. I also think that this book would be a great choice for a book group. There are so many questions to tackle that a group could talk about this book for hours.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley, for review consideration.

* Or listen to the brilliant (but occasionally raunchy) five part series the guys at Last Podcast on the Life did on Mormonism.

The Night Watchman is beautifully written, with such specific description that you feel you're seeing the events unfold.

You can always count on Louise Erdrich to deliver a solid story that resonates long after you put the book down. The Night Watchman doesn't disappoint.

Unforgettable characters drawn into the 1950s government effort to rob Native Americans of their land make this another testament to Louise Erdrich's enormous talent and love for her people.

Patrice, shortly out of high school, finagles a ride to her factory job every day to earn money to feed her mother and younger brother. She takes sick leave to travel to the city to find her missing older sister. She shares watch with her mother every night to ward off surprise visits from her alcoholic father.. She rebuffs other girls' jealousy of the unwanted attention she receives from so many men in the community as she struggles to decide who or what she loves.

Thomas farms days, patrols the factory nights and sacrifices sleep to lobby Washington not to nullify the treaty that guarantees tribe members their very few material goods. Their riches are an appreciation of nature and a reverence for family living and dead.

A beautiful story about a man well loved. I believe this may be her best book to date, and they were ALL good.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher!

After reading the book I've already planned it for our library's bookclub choice in fall. I would've liked another chapter or two which wrapped up storylines more succinctly, but perhaps a sequel is planned ... either way, good story with interesting characters.

I fell in love with Louise Erdrich after Shadow Tag, my second title of hers. I’ve since read and enjoyed all of her consecutive novels. And they’re all good! The Night Watchman is no exception. Pixie (I mean Patrice) was a great character - I’m feeling old now to find myself wishing that she hadn’t gone to the city to find Vera. That part I felt was awful and unnecessary. Only thing keeping it from being a 5 star read!

A beautifully written novel with little known history brought to life. Erdrich's book is a must read.

"But every so often the government remembered about Indians. And when they did, they always tried to solve Indians."

The Night Watchman is a novel about a senator who tried to “emancipate” Native American tribes in the 1950s and one of the men who led the fight against this so-called emancipation: “Emancipated. But they were not enslaved. Freed from being Indians was the idea.” It’s also about the people who live on Turtle Mountain Reservation, tracing their paths in life as emancipation looms. While this is about the history of the fight against emancipating the Indians, it's also about sexuality, gender, class, identity, love, “otherness,” and life on the margins.

Chapters alternate between Thomas, a night watchman at a jewel bearing plant and tribal leader; and Patrice “Pixie” Paranteau, a 19-year-old girl who also works at the plant. Other characters’ POV’s are woven in, but Thomas and Patrice serve as the primary voices. Erdrich’s characterization is exceptional. It was easy to visualize the characters and hear their voices as I was reading. Thomas is a compelling character, and while I loved his chapters, it was Patrice’s voice and character who got under my skin.

Patrice is extremely intelligent, strong, eager to grow, but at the same time, stuck, somewhat comfortably, in her life on the reservation. Happy with her current job, she longs for more in life. She carries the financial burdens of her family and acts as a protector to her mother, sister, and brother. She presents a tough exterior, but she is quite fragile. She knows the ins and outs of the reservation, but so little about the world. I finished this book some time ago and I am still thinking about her character.

I love Erdrich’s writing and her command over the language. She plays with the meaning of words, subverts norms, and makes her points subtly and quietly. She weaves in bits of humor to lighten the tone. I learned so much from reading this. Erdrich's author’s note at the end taught me even more. The fact that the current administration is trying to emancipate tribes doesn’t surprise me. It makes me nauseous and angry to think about. However, Erdrich's final sentences leave me feeling hopeful.

The Night Watchman is a powerful read filled with heart and soul. It serves as a loving tribute to Erdrich’s grandfather who fought for Native American Rights. The characters, their journeys, and the message of this book moved me and will stay with me for time to come. I highly recommend!

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

This is the best book I’ve read by Louise Erdrich. The writing is rich, the characters are solidly rendered, and their personal stories are complex and moving. That this book is based on the life experiences of Erdrich’s grandfather adds a sense of personal history, and the book is a touching tribute to the people who lived on the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota during the 1950’s. This is a book about what it feels like to face into the loss of your very way of life, what it means to stand up to the government which strives to “terminate” everything you’ve ever known about who you are and how and where you live and raise your children.This is a book about adversity and struggle, but underneath, it is also mostly about community, and love and strength and hope.

Wow! This book made me realize I have a lot to learn and have a lot more reading to do on the lives of Native Americans both at the start of our country and now. A beautiful and sometimes heart breaking look at this is what you get from Louise Erdrich this time and it is a can't miss!

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me an advanced reading copy in exchange for my honest opinion. Louise Erdrich is one of my favorite authors, and she does not disappoint in the Night Watchman. I really enjoyed the beautiful language and sentence structure and the picture of the reservation and reservation politics. I also like the imagery evoked with the spirit world. It turns out much of the book is based on her relatives and events from her relatives' lives.

Based on her father, Patrick Gourneau and, as she says, reflecting his toughness of spirit, Erdrich gives us a gem of a novel, one that details his role in the Turtle Mountain'Tribe's fight against its proposed termination in the 1950's. As we have come to expect from this thoughtful novelist, Erdrich presents us with deeply drawn characters, descriptions of the interrelationships of her characters with nature, personal relationships that ring true, realistic situations, and over all of this the sprits of her people who have prevailed over the many cruelties cast upon them by powerful people without good intentions. Erdrich's way with words stops the reader cold: Although the book was a little slow at the start, once I got into it I could not put it down. Brava!

This beautifully crafted novel is based on the experiences of the author's own grandfather in the 1950's when he was involved in the Chippewa response to Congress's attempt to eliminate the Turtle Mountain tribe. Told in the third person, the chapters alternate from one character's story to another, and somehow we become attached to almost all of them (except the really bad actors). The Watchman of the title (and Erdrich's grandfather) is Thomas "Muskrat," a respected elder whose paying job is to provide security for a factory that employs many Indian women. He has learned about proposed federal legislation that would eliminate any federal involvement with the tribe, in spite of treaties claiming to be in perpetuity, and effectively destroying it. Thomas becomes an activist to prevent this legislation, and finally goes to Washington to testify before Congress. Another important character is Patrice, who works at the factory and musters up her courage to travel to the twin cities to look for her sister, who has disappeared. Other people in Thomas and Patrice's life have dilemmas and mysteries and longings, all described sympathetically and believably. Native medicine and lore and beliefs are portrayed as part of daily life, even including the presence of ghosts. The writing is lyrical, with lovely turns of phrase calling to be underlined and remembered.

I just could not get into this book. The plot jumps around and it was hard to follow. I’m sorry to say that because I have liked most of Ms. Erdrich’s previous books.

Wow, this book is amazing. Set in the 1950's the novel tells of the US government's efforts to terminate the rights of Native American tribes and their rights to land. The main character, Thomas, is based on Louise Erdrich's father who did fight termination. The characters are wonderfully developed, the story fascinating, and the writing extraordinary. It's tells a part of US history not taught in schools. It's very relevant to what is happening in the US today. This is a book you won't be able to put down. I was sad to see it end. Thank you to Net Galley and Harper Collins for the early read.

Great slice of the American experience too often swept under the rug. Real characters portrayed in poverty and oppression in their Native experiences. I identified with Patrice as she fought for her family and went on her journey to find her sister. Learned more about Native American history and their fight for recognition and continued existence through Thomas. Recommended for history buffs, family characterization and alcoholism well described. Highly enjoyed.

This book was completely unique from anything else I've read which I appreciated. I really enjoyed the various storylines that came together together at the end of the book. In particular, I loved the story with Patrice, Vera, Wood Mountain, Archille and Zhanaat. I also like the work life dynamic between Patrice, Valentine, Betty and Doris. These were all extremely well illustrated characters. The portion of the book where Patrice is in the Cities is one of the most interesting parts of the entire book. I wish we learned more about part or it was extended- it was fascinating. I felt some other storylines were a bit more disjointed, but enjoyed them nonetheless. One part I could have done without is the extended boxing scenes and descriptions.

No one writes better of the American Indian experience in the past century than Louise Erdrich. Because this novel is part biographical, it carries the weight of truth of the US government's ongoing efforts to terminate tribes and their rights under legally signed and recognized treaties. That includes a recent effort by our current president and the Interior Department to terminate yet another tribe. Yet, the spirit of the story is of a close-knit people who survive, laugh, and love. This novel is both heart-breaking and heart-warming and so very worth every reader's time.

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins for the ARC to read and review.