At the midpoint of the novel Erdrich resurrects her most famous storyteller, Nanapush, through the dreams of Mooshum. Those familiar with Erdrich’s work may find comfort in the appearance of characters from her other novels in The Round House, which brings about a sense of continuity. By emphasizing the problem of attaining justice in the face of a brutal attack, Erdrich reiterates the long standing argument that Indians have repeatedly been the victim of federal law. She highlights the difficulty and the breakdown of the investigation due to uncertainty about whether the matter is the legal jurisdiction of the tribal police, state police, or federal government. Erdrich tackles the problematic situation of jurisdiction in her novel and the history of difficulties that Native Americans faced in their attempts to get justice through the U.S. Frustrated with the limitations and the slow movement of a legal process, Joe independently investigates his mother’s attack. Joe becomes a sounding board for his father, Bazil, who feels guilt and trepidation subjecting his son to this task as they scour court cases in an attempt to put together the pieces of the attack that has left their wife and mother silent and sealed away in her bedroom. Erdrich takes the reader along as Joe is forced into adulthood by needing to become self-reliant as both his parents lock themselves away: his mother emotionally shutting down and locking herself in her bedroom and his father, the tribal judge, pouring himself into his court cases and law books in an attempt to make sense of the heinous crime. Joe gets his wish as his life is forever changed after a brutal attack on his mother. In The Round House Erdrich skillfully presents a bildungsroman, opening her novel with her newly thirteen year old protagonist, Joe Coutts, lamenting his milquetoast life and hoping for some excitement, something different. Yet, in spite of similar themes and the reappearance of characters found in several of Erdrich’s works, she does break new ground in The Round House by taking a more political tone and highlighting historic legal difficulties faced by the Chippewa due to laws and policies created by the U.S.

Like many of Erdrich’s works, The Round House revolves around a Chippewa family living on a reservation in North Dakota. Louise Erdrich manages to merge both old and new in her most recent novel, The Round House.

Novel the round house