This book feels meandering at first, but it quickly becomes deceptively layered and intersectional—often in surprising ways. It touches on disproportionate victimization of marginalized people on issues people ought to have heard of, such as representation in incarceration versus population and common misconceptions, micro aggressions and outright racism; as well as other systemic issues, such as the mass, violent Displacement of indigenous people resulting in generations of indigenous people disconnected from their people and land because of “reeducation” and entering foster systems.

Tookie works at a bookstore after serving a long sentence. She has a relationship with the tribal officer who arrested her. She consumes indigenous stories through the lens of colonial authors because own voice authors are few and far between. The most frequent customer at the shop comes to represent a lot of complex issues with regards to displacement and identity with indigenous peoples, and when she dies, actually becomes a ghost that replicates colonial behaviour at a personal level on Tookie.

In some ways the story is very strange. It’s very concerned with a lot of particular books, generally well regarded novels in western lit. The plot doesn’t really drop a hook until just short of Halfway into the book. It establishes a lot about Tookie and intersectional identity in all the characters up to that point and it does, I think, manage to weave it altogether.

For a story about being haunted and dogged by generational issues that continue to intrude into the present, it initially feels like it has little stakes, but the pay off is quite good if you can latch onto and enjoy the overall voice and odd sort of curiosity it cultivates. I liked that it dodged western perspectives in its structure and the main narrative tension, and I simply haven’t seen these themes interrogated quite like this, so I quite liked it. It’s my first book by Erdrich and it made me excited to read more from her.