{"id":10121,"date":"2022-11-07T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-07T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10121"},"modified":"2022-11-06T11:05:50","modified_gmt":"2022-11-06T16:05:50","slug":"tales-of-the-red-river-of-the-north","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10121","title":{"rendered":"Tales of the Red River of the North"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Flannery O\u2019Connor\u2019s book Everything That Rises Must Converge<\/em> comes to mind whenever life brings seemingly random stuff together around a common theme. It happens all the time. Recently, I\u2019ve read two books about the same patch of land on the Red River of the North, which forms most of the border between Minnesota and North Dakota, then flows into Canada (pictured). You can\u2019t even say that I gravitated to these geographically linked books out of personal interest\u2014one was a pick of my book club and the other a gift. Both by prize-winning authors; both great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mystery Murder on the Red River<\/a><\/em>, first of a series of three by Marcie R. Rendon, features 19-year-old Cash Blackbear who lives alone in Fargo, North Dakota, and drives trucks for local farmers. Her lifestyle choices leave room for improvement: too much beer, lots of cigarettes. She earns extra money playing competitive pool, often with her romantic partner, a married man. Playing pool isn\u2019t destructive, per se, of course, but being out late at night in honky-tonk bars where the pool-playing events are held does expose Cash to certain dangers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When she was a child, she fell under the watchful eye of Sheriff Wheaton, who can recognize an at-risk kid when he sees one. They are still friends. He thinks she\u2019s the smartest person he knows and she has intuition so strong, it produces visions. When an Indian man turns up dead in a field, she helps the sheriff investigate, and an engrossing story is launched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Multiple award-winner Louise Erdrich\u2019s book The Sentence<\/a><\/em> is wonderfully rich and evocative, not only of the cultural background and nuanced relationship of her main characters Tookie, an Ojibwe tribe member, and her husband Pollux, a Potawatomi. The ways\u2014big and small\u2014that they integrate tribal teachings with their present lives is fascinating. At the book\u2019s outset, Tookie commits a crime that takes her to prison (one of the meanings of the book\u2019s title), and the first chapter begins, \u201cWhile in prison, I received a dictionary.\u201d With that juxtaposition of unlikely elements, you just have to keep reading!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dictionary was sent to her by a former teacher, and when Tookie\u2019s sentence is commuted, the teacher hires her to work in her bookstore. (Erdrich herself owns a bookstore in Minneapolis, Birchbark Books). This story takes place in Minneapolis, with the occasional reference to Red River places and people\u2014all very fresh in my mind, thanks to Marcie Rendon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bookstore\u2019s most annoying customer dies on All Souls\u2019 Day 2019, and the story takes place over the following year, one full of incident. In the wider world, there\u2019s the pandemic, with employees having to figure out how to work, how to keep the business going, even how to live, in the face of that upheaval. A couple of months in, George Floyd is murdered, and social isolation seems not the right way to go, when conscience urges people onto the streets. Aggressive police tactics have affective the Indian community too, as the bookstore employees are quick to point out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tookie\u2019s own life has its complications. The dead customer haunts the store, especially her. The staff try any number of stratagems to persuade the poor woman to go. Will they ever get rid of her? At the other end of the life cycle, Pollux\u2019s daughter has come home, bringing her baby, and Tookie is smitten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a lovely book, and one where my interest never flagged. Can recommend this Red River excursion to whole-heartedly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking for Great Reading? My quarterly newsletter has ideas for you. Sign up here<\/a> and receive three prize-winning short stories!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Flannery O\u2019Connor\u2019s book Everything That Rises Must Converge comes to mind whenever life brings seemingly random stuff together around a common theme. It happens all the time. Recently, I\u2019ve read two books about the same patch of land on the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Two remarkable yet totally different books about modern-day Indians and their lives in the upper Midwest. Prize-winning authors; wonderful books.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1335,61,52,366,40,126],"tags":[2028,2025,2026,2027],"class_list":["post-10121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amateur-detective","category-character","category-crime","category-drama","category-fiction","category-reading-2","tag-indians","tag-louise-erdrich","tag-marcie-r-rendon","tag-red-river"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2Df","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10121"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10123,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10121\/revisions\/10123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}