The ghosts of Minnesota
Louise Erdrich’s latest novel, “The Sentence,” is an unusual book that is at times amusing, tragic, poignant, uncomfortable, current, ageless, and unflinching in calling out injustice toward marginalized people in America.
And, it’s a ghost story. “I am an ugly woman,” Tookie, our frank Ojibe protagonist, tells us on page one. “I am not about teachable moments. Nor am I beautiful on the inside.”
We first meet Tookie as a careless younger adult who, lovestruck and broke, commits an absurd crime for approval and money, a comical turn of events that turns deadly serious upon her being sentenced to 60 years in prison. This sobering turn firmly changes the novel’s direction and tone, with its humor largely disappearing other than Tookie’s dry narration and the occasional wise-cracking banter with those around her.
Released from prison after only seven years and now married to the tribal police officer who’d reluctantly arrested her for her crime,
Tookie lands a job at a local bookstore that features strong emphasis on Native American books, establishing the novel’s emphasis on the power of literature, a prominent theme throughout.
The store is the setting of Tookie’s new, largely normal life, allowing her to find her footing as a reliable adult, and to relish in her ability to recommend books, albeit while sometimes having to field occasional tonedeaf questions about Native American life, queries such as “How do I get an Indian name?” “Do you have an Indian saying about death?” “Are there any real Indians left?”
Things take a peculiar turn when Flora, a prickly white woman who is the store’s steadiest customer and an enthusiast of all things Native American, suddenly dies. Flora, whom Tookie derisively deems a wannabe, was known to tell people she “had been an Indian in a former life,” and later, flat-out claimed, with little proof, that her “greatgrandma was ashamed of being Indian.” And, she proves to be no less difficult in death
than she does in life: five days after dying, Flora proceeds to haunt the place. The haunting is mere annoyance at first, laced with mischief and played by Erdrich for mild amusement, until the specter shifts into an unrelenting presence, wearing on Tookie’s mind before segueing into a truly menacing force, foretelling of dark divination afoot — the certainty that something is coming, something very bad.
“The Sentence” presents mystical propositions as being accepted as fact within the Indigenous community, with the cause and effect of supernatural forces, the power of nature and of ritual, and the consequences of past acts on the present potentially affecting how life will unfold. Unseen things simply are. It’s noted that Flora died on All Saints Day, “when the fabric between the worlds is thin as tissue and easily torn.” The book held by Flora when she died later refuses to be burned, possibly due to a sentence within that wants to be read.
The novel is powerful and blunt in educating its readers about the racist beginnings
of Minnesota and surrounding regions, its horrific origins, its slave trade, and the false trial and hanging of 38 Dakota males the day after Christmas in 1862. Tookie posits that this history continues to haunt the region, thwarting present day attempts to apply progressive ideas as law, and dooming its denizens to repeat its history in modern form.
This ambitious menu of intertwining items comes close to paying off fully, although periodic forays into lesser characters and overly generous details about daily life at times bog down the whole.
The advent of Covid-19 appears late in the book and is worked effectively into the story, allowing Tookie to demonstrate if not discover
her softer, caring side. Unfortunately, the horrific murder of George Floyd that follows is introduced late enough in the book that it feels almost shoehorned in, and the portion of the story left before book’s end isn’t quite adequate enough to weave its enormity into what began as Flora’s light ghost tale.
Still, most of the book works very well, and Erdrich has once again delivered a richly painted story that examines the best and worst of humankind, doing so with objectivity, heartache, faith, and generosity.