Another masterpiece of Americana from an expert storyteller

Erdrich tells the stories of America that need to be told. In another multifaceted and kaleidoscopic novel, Erdrich tells of thwarted romance and overweening ambition, environmental depletion and futile book clubs, folklore and rumour, in a picaresque and restless novel of parts.

The Mighty Red is the flow of history and family bloodlines and the river that runs through Tabor, North Dakota. You know they say it takes a village to... and here Erdrich shows you that it does, it takes a village to be a village, to raise its children, to foment its feuds and rivalries, to support romances both licit and star-crossed, that it takes a village to do both good and wrong. No one is an island, ultimately. We all come from somewhere, and we rely on others to some degree.

I loved this book. No character is ever exactly what they seem, most of them lying to themselves about something, or at the very least refusing to engage with the thing that lies at the heart of their needs or their fears, but in the moments where, in Erdrich's sure control, each finally finds themselves facing the one thing they wanted or the one thing they most avoided, that's where the comedy and drama comes together.

It took me a wee while to get all the characters in my head, but by then this phenomenal story teller had hooked me in with this tapestry of mesmerising stories, of family, mid western history, even ghosts, I found the agricultural slant really interesting the effect of single crop production (sugar beet) on the community, the environment and even the health of those involved. That said it is not preachy and at its heart The Mighty Red is about love and redemption and all the wobbly roads that lead to it.

I felt warm in the embrace of The Mighty Red thanks to the gentle power of Louise Erdrich's skill with words. Such a simple story - essentially the love triangle between two boys and a girl - is enriched with deeper meaning about the world, the environment, people. I felt a member of the Argus community as I read about troubled Gary, unsure Kismet, wise Hugo, thrifty Crystal, fearful Winnie, mysterious Martin.

This isn't a fast paced story, by any means, but one that takes its time to develop and evolve. The reader patiently waits for the revelation behind what Gary did that caused so much upset within this town. Hints are sprinkled sparingly, the seeds of dread firmly planted. My heart broke with the explanation but that is not the whole of this story, just a fraction. There are so many levels to explore. Much to do with farming, a heartbreaking chemical practice by current standards, and this book brims with intelligence from unexpected quarters on a better way to work with nature.

I loved The Mighty Red and came away with hope for the future. Something surely lacking if you spend any time reading the news these days. Much like the end of the book, I felt at peace with the world. A rare gift I will cherish.

The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich

In North Dakota, Gary asks Kismet to marry him because he thinks she'll save him, but Kismet is in love with Hugo. Their wedding kickstarts a whole chain of events whereby family, friends and members of the community come to terms with a terrible accident, Kismet's dad runs off with the church fund, Hugo leaves town... and so much more!

What a breathtaking novel - the range of characters and issues is astonishing! I loved the quirkiness of the character observations - so much said with so few words. And the environmental issues were fascinating (and alarming) too. I haven't read any other books by this author but will check them out now. Very highly recommended.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book.

I have found this book enjoyable, but not as good as Erdrich’s previous works, I think possibly because I felt less invested in the main character. We follow Kismet, a reformed goth, as she marries Gary, despite being more interested in Hugo, having met both young men at school. The night before her wedding, her father Martin disappears after having seemingly taken all of the money raised to repair the church; her mother Crystal is left destitute and ostracised.
I did not manage to feel interested in Kismet’s love triangle, and I was disappointed not to read more about Crystal, which felt more interesting as a character.
There is quite a bit about the environment but it felt like an addition rather than a central part of the plot, despite several characters talking about the merits of permaculture versus pesticides for the beets they grow.
Enjoyable still but if you have never read anything by Louise Erdrich, this is not the one I would read first.

A new to me author gives us a story full of action, adventure and mystery with diverse characters aplenty to support the captivating storyline. A really enjoyable read!

Multi-award winning indigenous American author Louise Erdrich has set her new novel The Mighty Red in the heartlands of the Ojibwe people (Erdrich herself is a member of the Turtle Band, a tribe of the Ojibwe). Set on the banks of the Red River in North Dakota, country used for growing sugarbeet but also subject to fracking, The Mighty Red is a multilayered story that shifts effortlessly from a teen love triangle to the 2008 financial crisis to environmental concerns to tragedy through a wide cast of very human characters.
The Mighty Red opens in 2008 with Crytal, an Ojibwe woman who works night shift driving sugar beets to the processing plant. Crystal’s teenage daughter Kismet is saving up for college but finds herself swept into marriage with local jock Gary, who’s family runs one of the big beet farms, and who carries a dark secret. Despite her marriage, Kismet has stronger feelings for the bookish Hugo who ends up leaving town to seek his fortune on the fracking fields. Crystal’s life is thrown into disarray when her partner Martin absconds with the church development fund and she finds he has saddled her with a new mortgage.
This summary does not begin to cover the range of characters or situations in The Mighty Red. Erdrich brings the whole town to life through short chapters from multiple points of view including Gary’s parents, his best friend Eric, Hugo’s parents - bookshop owner Bev and organic farmer Ichor - and a huge range of others. Erdrich is interested in the lives of these people, how they relate to and support each other, even when they disagree, how they make and live with good and bad decisions and how they strive and struggle. The plot, such as it is, emerges from these interactions.
And at the same time, Erdrich is interested in the landscape and the impact on it of people. At one point in the narrative she describes a buffalo migration from the 19th century which lasted three days. At others she illuminates the role of big agribusinesses putting a stranglehold on farmers to use their patented, insecticide resistant seeds and then their insecticides. But she also has characters who want to return to a more natural mode of farming, that is more in harmony with nature.
The Mighty Red is another masterpiece from Erdrich. Her characters are rich and recognisably flawed and produce a drama that is in turns comic and tragic always feels true. She displays a deep love of the landscape, its richness and its potential. And there is just a little bit of magic, or at least spiritualism, flagged by a very early piece on guardian angels. In pulling all of this together, Erdrich earns an ending that possibly involves a little more wishful or positive thinking than readers might have expected but will relish.

The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich
⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.5 stars
Publication date: 30 September 2024
Thank you to Little Brown Books UK and Netgalley for providing me with an e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

In Argus, North Dakota, a collection of people revolve around a fraught wedding. Gary Geist is desperate to marry Kismet Poe. Gary thinks Kismet is the answer to all of his problems. During a clumsy proposal, Kismet misses her chance to say 'no' and so the die is cast.

I loved this so much. In my previous review, I mentioned Erdrich’s ability to create such vivid, compelling characters - and it is very much the case again with The Mighty Red. Even though there is an overarching story and plot (there is even a little bit of a mystery,) this is almost structured in vignettes that focus on all the different characters and their lives and personal stories. Erdrich's prose is gorgeous, and her descriptions of nature are beautiful. I appreciated her exploration of the deep bond between nature and native communities, as well as the impact of industrial agriculture on the environment.
This book is in turn very funny, heartbreaking, a little grotesque and quite hard-hitting; I have nothing but admiration for an author capable of bringing all those elements in one story and getting the balance so, so right.

The Mighty Red
By Louise Erdrich

The Mighty Red is a river in North Dakota and home to a rural community where sugar beet farming is the dominant way of life. Set during 2008/9, the financial crash has left many in economic jeopardy, and everyone feels the pain, scraping to get by.

This is the story of a girl who is torn between two lovers, but her choice, while made in haste, confirms the old marriage adage that she can repent at leisure. The novel is structured around the stages of her nuptials, but actually it is the story of several marriages, including her mother's, her mother in law's, and the sacrifices women make to support their husband's frail egos.

I love Erdrich's characters. They are the salt of the earth, decent folk, who don't always make great decisions, but are full of heart and soul. There are strong themes of life and the afterlife, the various guides of the spirit world, and of the relationship between humans and the earth we live on, how farming practices have impacted on soil and how we eschew more sustainable and nutritious foodstuffs in place of monoculture.

This is my favourite from this author so far.

Publishes today, 30th September 2024
Thanks to #NetGalley and #LittleBrownBooks for the ARC

4.5 stars. This book really surprised me by how much I enjoyed reading it. I was propelled through it in only two days! I loved the warmth of the characters, especially the two strong female protagonists, as well as the explorations of nature and human relationships. I found it funny and touching at different points and really enjoyed the interweaving of Native American beliefs. Well worth a read!

There should be a word for the feeling you get when you discover a book you love by a new-to-you author and realise they have a substantial backlist for you to devour. That’s my happy experience on reading The Mighty Red.

Kismet is about to finish high school in rural North Dakota and is looking forward to college. She is spending a lot of time with clever, nerdy Hugo, whose eccentric parents allow him to home-educate himself on a computer in his basement. However she somehow, almost accidentally, finds herself engaged to Gary, the one-time school football hero who is now under a cloud following a traumatic event for the community.

Meanwhile Kismet’s parents are living almost separate lives. Her father, Martin, is creative, whimsical and self-indulgent, pursuing his dreams as an underemployed actor, while her mother, Crystal, is also creative but has to give all her ingenuity to keeping the family – working gruelling night-shifts hauling sugar beets to the processing plant and practising small economies. Then Martin ups and disappears – and so does the church renovation fund, which he was supposedly investing on behalf of the priest.

At the heart of The Mighty Red are Kismet and Crystal, and how they respond to the two big events – Kismet’s marriage and Martin’s betrayal. You might think you’ve heard all this before. Kismet’s romantic dilemma is the classic jock versus nerd, and Crystal is a strong woman abandoned by a wastrel. (I’ve been reading a lot of Trollope lately so both premises feel very familiar.) However, what unfolds is more nuanced than I expected and includes a few surprises. And while the book deals with dark themes, there’s also some fun along the way!

The Mighty Red is set against the backdrop of the financial crisis of 2008, and the increasing use of GM crops by farmers. The narrative spools out from the family to tell the story of a community, a society and a place. There’s some beautiful writing about the North Dakota landscape, and its history, even as it is under threat. The sugar industry, it turns out, is not just destroying our health, it’s also destroying the land.

In the daily intrigues of a small town, we see individuals striving to make moral choices in a world where corporations face no such constraints. The Mighty Red depicts people in crisis in an economy and a climate on the brink, but there are green shoots of resilience and redemption.

I am a recent fan of Louise Erdrich. I have not read her classic oeuvre, but I have enjoyed both The Night Watchman and The Sentence immensely. I was thrilled to be approved for an ARC of her latest novel. In some ways, The Mighty Red is very similar to other Erdrich novels I've read in terms of style and content, and in some ways it is quite different. We follow a cast of characters orbiting around Kismet, a teenager with Indigenous ancestry, such as her mother, her two love interests, their families, friends and neighbours. Nominally, the plot focuses on Kismet's marriage to Gary, a jock struggling to process an accident in which some of his friends died, but this novel is really not about the plot. It is a series of character studies and a holistic portrait of a North Dakota community which views Fargo is an aspirational big city where things happen.

Erdrich's confident prose alone is enough to make this a worthwhile read. The more darkly humorous tone than some of her other novels invokes the Coen Brothers' movie it is in a sort of dialogue with. However, it is more subtle and less overtly focused on the politics of indigeneity than The Night Watchman and the Sentence (although it shares a focus on a local bookshop with the latter). Environmentalism and the politics of food are more at the forefront of this one. A large portion of the novel is dedicated to the land, the soil, and agricultural developments. Some of the anti-pesticide sections reminded me of My Year of Meats, although Erdrich is slightly less preachy than Ozeki. Having said this, most of the narrative is about the specific characters, The Mighty Red is far from a thinly disguised essay about food production.

Reading this novel is akin to seeing the world with glasses about 0.5 dioptres stronger than you need. Everything is a little bit skewed, a little bit off and a little bit too intense. Kismet's decision to marry Gary for no particular reason, Winnie's drugging of her dogs, Hugo's experiences of labour out of state, not to mention Martin's bank robbing escapades, all left me perplexed but unable to look away. The satire and the absurd are just slight enough for all the characters to still feel real whilst leaving the situations feeling distinctly unreal.

When we finally do get to what happened on the fateful night of the accident, all bets are off, though. I've read plenty of gory books before, but Erdrich's masterful evocation of the realities of the snowmobile accident affected me deeply and made it hard to read those chapters. I wish Charley either got more attention in the text, or his single POV chapter was not in it, as he has one of the most profound stories which did not get any time to be explored properly.

If you love Louise Erdrich, you will read this regardless of what I say, so the conclusion is for people new to her craft. Some might call this book somewhat unfocused. It reminded me of Tess Gunty's The Rabbit Hutch, which it shares some of the strengths and weaknesses with. Erdrich is a more experienced writer and her prose is stronger, so if you liked what TRH tried to do but were disappointed in the execution, I would recommend The Mighty Red. Definitely the kind of book I was thinking about re-reading as I was reading it for the first time.

Thank you NetGalley and Hachette/Corsair for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I love Louise Erdrichs’ writing and have read most of her books. I was delighted to be given the chance to read The Mighty Red. It didn’t disappoint.
Reading Louise Erdrich writing is like reading poetry, her writing flows along. The Mighty Red is about ordinary people and love and circumstances that sometimes we have no control over. I absolutely loved it and highly recommend it.
Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to read and share this book.

As usual with Louise Erdrich, the reader gets something that little bit different.
Because she is a poet as well as a novelist her descriptions are more poetic.
I lost count of the number of times in this book when I was stopped in my tracks following one of her expressions/descriptions as I marvelled at its beauty.
The intertwined stories in the book were easy to follow even though the worlds portrayed were strange (and interesting) for the British reader.
I loved this book.
I still have a few of Louise's books to read, which I am very much looking forward to, and I also hope to see more books by her in the future.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

'The Mighty Red' is set among ordinary people living in the valley of the Red river in North Dakota, a rural area full of sugar beet farms. Kismet Poe is a young woman who finds herself reluctantly marrying Gary - rich, handsome and traumatised by an accident that killed two of his friends. Kismet doesn't particularly want to be Gary's wife, but circumstances somehow conspire against her. The relationship and marriage form perhaps the centre of the story, but it's really an ensemble piece with multiple characters all with their own stories. There's Kismet's father, who disappears on the eve of her wedding together with the church restoration fund; her hardworking mother Crystal; her awful but rather pitiful mother-in-law; Gary, who isn't the carefree 'jock' everyone imagines; and Hugo, the boy she should have married instead. Plus many more.

Erdrich is one of those authors who can write in a style that is both 'literary' and easy to read. Her style and subject matter reminds me of popular US author Anne Tyler. It's rare I read a book where I loved every character - even the ones whose behaviour isn't always ideal. I wanted to hate Kismet's in-laws, but I couldn't - and neither could she. In fact, whilst I was shouting at the character to just pull out and not go through with a wedding she clearly didn't want, I could also imagine myself ending up in the same pickle. The nice thing about liking all the characters is that it makes you feel better about human life in general.

There is also a subplot around the impact of intensive farming on nature, with insects and birds disappearing as pesticide use increases and the soil on the beet farms becoming more and more degraded. This acted as a good counterpoint to the human dramas and is an important topic to be reminded of, particularly as rural issues like this can be somewhat hidden to city dwellers like me.

I would highly recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys reading good books with good characters - and really, who doesn't? It might not make me want to go and be a sugar beet farmer, but it does make me want to read up everything else by Erdrich that I can get my hands on!

Another melancholy book from Louise Erdrich. While I recognize the author as a brilliant writer, the theme of this book seems to be that happiness is for the privileged, most of the characters in The Mighty Red simply survive

The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich is about love and making mistakes and neighbours, family and community.