The Round House

by Louise Erdrich

[Beth C.]

This is not a book that blows its way into your life. No, it just quietly creeps in and grabs your soul and reminds you to listen to the story. Reminds you that this book of fiction is based on stark reality. Compels you to keep reading, not just to see *how* the story ends but WHY and even IF the story within the story will *ever* end. At the surface, this book is about a rape committed on an Indian Reservation and the aftermath of the brutality. At its heart, though, this book is about damaged souls, redemption, and the sad truth of how powerless the government has rendered tribes all over our country.

Joe is 13 the day he learns his mother has been raped and sees the damage done to her body. Over time, he sees the damage done to her soul, as it seeps into every facet of their life. Joe just wants his "before" mother back...but as he begins to understand that their family may never be the same, he is faced with a choice that will help remind him what love, honor and friendship really mean.

Sobering statistics, as per the Afterword in the book: "1 in 3 Native women will be raped in her lifetime...". Probably more, because it's typically not reported. "86 percent of rapes and sexual assaults of Native women are done by non-Native men." Not many of these are prosecuted - in large part, because of the tangle of laws that surround the Reservations. Louise Erdrich has taken those statistics, numbers on a page, and breathed life into them, given them identities and brought them out into the open. She has gracefully, yet completely, allowed us to see not only how shattering a rape is, but how defining it can be when the victim has no clear path to justice. And she has reminded us that it doesn't have to be this way. It can (and should) be fixed.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. It is a beautifully written story that will stay with you long after you finish it. And yet, it is even more. It is, as is often the case, truth brought out of the shadows through the medium of fiction.