The Mighty Red

A Novel

De: Louise Erdrich

Narrado por: Marin Ireland

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK • A FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE FOR FICTION

"[A] sweeping, tender-hearted epic." —Harper's Bazaar

In this stunning novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning author Louise Erdrich tells a story of love, natural forces, spiritual yearnings, and the tragic impact of uncontrollable circumstances on ordinary people’s lives.

History is a flood. The mighty red . . .

In Argus, North Dakota, a collection of people revolve around a fraught wedding.

Gary Geist, a terrified young man set to inherit two farms, is desperate to marry Kismet Poe, an impulsive, lapsed Goth who can't read her future but seems to resolve his.

Hugo, a gentle red-haired, home-schooled giant, is also in love with Kismet. He’s determined to steal her and is eager to be a home wrecker.

Kismet's mother, Crystal, hauls sugar beets for Gary's family, and on her nightly runs, tunes into the darkness of late-night radio, sees visions of guardian angels, and worries for the future, her daughter’s and her own.

Human time, deep time, Red River time, the half-life of herbicides and pesticides, and the elegance of time represented in fracking core samples from unimaginable depths, is set against the speed of climate change, the depletion of natural resources, and the sudden economic meltdown of 2008-2009. How much does a dress cost? A used car? A package of cinnamon rolls? Can you see the shape of your soul in the everchanging clouds? Your personal salvation in the giant expanse of sky? These are the questions the people of the Red River Valley of the North wrestle with every day.

The Mighty Red is a novel of tender humor, disturbance, and hallucinatory mourning. It is about on-the-job pains and immeasurable satisfactions, a turbulent landscape, and eating the native weeds growing in your backyard. It is about ordinary people who dream, grow up, fall in love, struggle, endure tragedy, carry bitter secrets; men and women both complicated and contradictory, flawed and decent, lonely and hopeful. It is about a starkly beautiful prairie community whose members must cope with devastating consequences as powerful forces upend them. As with every book this great modern master writes, The Mighty Red is about our tattered bond with the earth, and about love in all of its absurdity and splendor.

A new novel by Louise Erdrich is a major literary event; gorgeous and heartrending, The Mighty Red is a triumph.

©2024 Louise Erdrich (P)2024 HarperCollins Publishers

Read this book

This is a stellar novel, and I hope you read it.

Like with other Louise Erdrich tales, these character are going to live rent free in my head, flawed and beautiful and striving all at the same time. Much like this reader (perhaps that’s the draw).

Without giving anything away, I appreciate Erdrich’s ability to throw a big jumble of confusion at you and then slowly put things in order. It’s absolutely compelling, discovering the ‘why’ behind seemingly random or irrational character behavior. The story arc in The Mighty Red kept me turning pages long into the night until my curiosity was finally satisfied.

The voice actor reading the Audible production did a nice job keeping the many characters and dialogue clear in my mind and added a new dimension to the storytelling that I worked we’ll, I would read more of their work without hesitation.

Love Louise Erdrich’s writing!

The backdrop of the metaphysical and the agricultural relationship to the earth enriched the storyline.

beautiful story, belittling narration

The story is compelling and beautiful. The narrator belittles it with her tone and effects. Louise is an amazing reader of her own work. She should re-record this for Audible.

Just kind of blah

Just such a sloooow start. Don’t love the narrator. She reads like she knows a back joke that we don’t know.

Meh

Not Erdrich’s best novel. Took me a long time to get into the story. The usual quirky small town characters. A few passages of mesmerizing writing but not as consistently as I’ve come to expect from this author.

Great characters.

I love the setting and focus on farming, 21st century style. Erdrich knows how to move a complicated cast of characters forward.

Another beautiful novel from a great author!

A beautifully woven story, braiding several characters with their landscape. It exudes love of land and nature, as well as of the flawed humans that live upon it.
Maybe one of my favorite of Erdrich’s novels.

Captivating story

The reading was very expressive. Male voices would have made it more realistic and would have added depth.

Wonderful storytelling as always

Love this author as always, and the narration did it justice. I just finished and already know I’ll come back and listen again.

Life is for the living

The author has historical roots in this NE part of North Dakota. One might assume she spent time here as a child or even as an adult and learned the ways of the land. She also has her own past from which I would guess she writes and weaves at least to an extent into her stories. Drawing from all this comes this book.

I'm from a small town in Iowa that could be just like the setting for this book in many ways. Normal people just trying to get by, eke out a living, live life on its terms.

One interesting tidbit was that several times it was mentioned there was mixed blood, the whites and the Native Americans. There were three tribes from around this area. But the author states that everyone knew who had mixed blood, not in a bad way but rather just that it existed. That wasn't the case in my hometown. But much of the way of life was and still is.

In listening to the book, I thought about what the book really all about. About life, how tough it can be and still wonderful.

Life has taught me, and this book reinforces the idea that life is for the living.