Tragedy exposes what families inflict on each other
‘LaRose’ author takes her story in unexpected directions
Landreaux Iron, the Ojibwe protagonist of Louise Erdrich’s dark new novel, “LaRose,” is about to become the catalyst of every parent’s worst nightmare. But when he goes hunting in the woods of the North Dakota reservation where he lives, he doesn’t know that he’s seconds away from causing a tragedy. He isn’t thinking about his wife, Emmaline, and their five children; or the drinking problem he has struggled to conquer; or his Caucasian brotherin-law, Peter Ravich, who lives adjacent to the reservation with Emmaline’s half-sister Nola and their two children. Landreaux’s only thought, as he stands amid the chokecherries with a rifle against his shoulder, is to finally shoot the buck he’s been stalking all summer.
When the buck pauses on the reservation line to look at Peter’s cornfield, Landreaux, a skilled hunter, pulls the trigger. But the bullet misses his prey. It kills Dusty Ravich, Peter and Nola’s 5-year-old son, who had been sitting on a branch of a nearby tree.
Each family has the predictable reactions, but the beauty of “LaRose” lies in the unexpected directions in which Erdrich takes her story, set in the years immediately before and after the start of the Iraq War. One of the many themes of this novel is, not surprisingly, the desire for retribution. But Dusty’s death is only the most dramatic event to engender grief and resentment. “LaRose” is a subtle examination of the sadness that families inflict upon one another and the pull of tradition when facing life’s cruelest vicissitudes.
As Peter, Nola and their 10-year-old daughter Maggie grieve, Landreaux and Emmaline seek guidance from the reservation’s priest, Father Travis, an ex-Marine who teaches martial arts. After their meeting, the Irons give LaRose, their 5-yearold son, to the Raviches, in keeping with the tradition of the Ojibwe, an indigenous people with communities in the United States and Canada. “Our son will be your son now,” Landreaux says.
Based on this shocking gesture, you might think that LaRose would be a large part of the narrative. That’s not the case. Although LaRose is the main link between the families, Erdrich focuses more attention on the ramifications of Dusty’s death and the existing tensions that the tragedy further exposes.
One of the many conflicts is the animosity between Nola and Emmaline. Their relationship, already strained, worsens after the accident, to the extent that Nola rejects every further offering Emmaline brings her, from a quilt she stitches to LaRose’s favorite frybread. One wishes there were more to Nola than her grief, although Erdrich shrewdly makes her a not-entirely-likable character, as when Nola shows conflicted feelings toward Maggie: “She had raised a monster whom she hated with all the black oils of her heart but whom she also loved with a deadly confused despair.”
Then there’s Romeo, a grifter with skulls tattooed around his neck who collects both gossip and, in a lucrative side gig, discarded medications. He has known Landreaux since childhood and has many grievances against him, including his contention that Landreaux stole Emmaline from him. In part to get back at Landreaux, Romeo accepts a job as a hospital maintenance man, where he has access to medical records he thinks reveal an uncomfortable and unknown fact about the circumstances of Dusty’s death.
In the midst of all of this is LaRose, the fifth generation of LaRoses in Landreaux’s family. Erdrich intercuts the narrative with scenes of the first LaRose, an 11-yearold girl who, through adventures in the 1830s with a trader and his clerk, demonstrates an ability to connect with the spirit world that has been passed on to Landreaux and Emmaline’s young son.
The families ultimately share LaRose out of concern for his well-being. But he ends up caring for them as much as they care for him. When Maggie says she fears Nola may harm herself, LaRose assures her he can prevent her self-destruction. “I got some spirit helpers,” he says. He also has martialarts skills learned from Father Travis, skills he’s determined to use against four boys who committed a vicious injustice against Maggie.
The novel’s pacing occasionally flags, and some may find the modern-day LaRose too sweet and selfless to be believable. But most of “LaRose” is a powerful evocation of two families’ struggle to overcome misfortune. Father Travis sums up the novel’s central theme best. While exercising one day, he remembers a bomb explosion from his time in the Marines. He remembers rubble falling on him and hands pulling him out. That episode taught him the lesson that Erdrich’s characters, one way or another, are forced to confront: “Getting blown up happened in an instant; getting put together took the rest of your life.” Michael Magras is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. His work has appeared in Minneapolis’ Star Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago Tribune and The Iowa Review.