People kept raving about this book by Louise Erdrich, and since I loved her book, The Night Watchman, I decided this one was probably also worth a read.
I just realized while writing the above paragraph that I started reading the ebook of The Night Watchman, then finished with the audiobook, and for this one, I switched it. I started with the audiobook, but wasn’t able to finish it before it went back to the library. So I requested both versions of the book and the ebook was available first, so that’s how I finished it.
The audiobook narrator does a great job, so I would definitely recommend that format if that’s your thing.
This book is about so many things it’s hard to pin down just one.
It’s certainly about human relationships: familial, romantic, platonic, professional, and everything in between.
It’s also about our relationship with the Earth and the long-term costs of herbicides and pesticides used for short-term financial gains.
If anyone is at the center of this book, I’d say it’s Crystal and her daughter, Kismet.
Crystal married Kismet’s father when she was young and in love (and pregnant) but poverty and hardship have worn away that love.
Now Crystal scrimps and saves and does everything she can to make a future for her daughter who is set to go to college and get out of the small town of Argus, North Dakota.
But her potential is derailed by Gary, the all-star athlete of their high school football team. He’s determined to have Kismet for himself because he thinks she can quiet his guilty conscience.
Why, exactly, his conscience is so guilty takes most of the book to be revealed.
But there are signs from the beginning that this relationship isn’t going to work.
Gary proclaims his love for Kismet again and again, but only to manipulate her into staying with, and then marrying him.
Not only does Kismet agree to marry Gary when she’s drunk, but when thinking about him, she thinks only of how much he loves her (or, at least, how much he claims to love her.) She never talks about how much she loves him.
That’s probably because she doesn’t love him. She loves Hugo, who works at his parents’ used bookstore. It’s obvious to everyone but Kismet that he’s the one she belongs with.
It doesn’t help that Hugo is penniless and Gary’s family owns two farms, including the farm that hires Crystal to haul sugar beets.
It also doesn’t help that the novel starts with Crystal’s husband running off with all the money he was trusted to invest for the local church’s renovation.
As if that weren’t bad enough, he took out another mortgage on Crystal’s house, leaving her to deal with the debt, even after she had already paid off the house.
Since he’s not around to yell at, people in the community turn on Crystal, either because they assume she was his accomplice, but more likely just because they need someone to yell at and the true culprit is long gone.
I can’t put my finger on what it is about this book I loved so much. It was just such a well-written, tender, moving exploration of the messiest parts of human relationships, the things we do to try to make it right, and the things we don’t do to make it right, even (especially?) when we know we should.