The Antidote by Karen Russell

The Antidote by Karen Russell

432 pages

Published March 2025 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary: 

The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the dust bowl drought but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a "Prairie Witch,” whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples’ memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate.

Russell's novel is above all a reckoning with a nation’s forgetting—enacting the settler amnesia and willful omissions passed down from generation to generation, and unearthing not only horrors but shimmering possibilities. The Antidote echoes with urgent warnings for our own climate emergency, challenging readers with a vision of what might have been—and what still could be.

My Thoughts: 

The Antidote was a great book to finish off 2024. It defies classification: it is both historical fiction and fantasy. It is political commentary, sweeping saga, intimate personal stories. It is devastating and hopeful, tense but not without humor. It's set in one of the most notable times of this country's history but addresses concerns that span the centuries. And it's set in a fictional small town in Nebraska, but it's packed with real places, the real history of the state, and real photographs taken by those sent to record that time.

"Black Sunday began as a gash in the western sky, growing wider and wider and spilling down dirt instead of blood. Sometimes I imagine the glee of those journalists in the New York City papers - typing up the story of our worst day in their fancy language. Adjusting the margins and pushing our tragedy into a skinny column, just like old Marvin at the funeral home shoving a tall corpse into a tight suit."

"Imagine every ghost rising up to hurl their cemetery earth at the living. That was the sound we heard last Sunday afternoon. At 3:00 p.m the sun was murdered in cold blood, in full view of every woman and child. The sun sank into black cloud. Buried alive, at a shocking altitude, but the duster to end all dusters."

We get the story primarily from The Prairie Witch, Asphodel Oletsky, Harp Oletsky, and Cleo Allfrey whose names will change as chapter headings as the books progresses. But we also get chapters from the points of view of a cat and a scarecrow, chapters that are The Antidote's history, and one of Harp's "deposits." In less skilled hands, all of this shifting could be confusing; but Russell skillfully blends all of these points of view at the same time she is moving the story forward while giving us the backstory of the land and the people. The characters are fully realized, their travails their own but their concerns and hopes universal. While the full story is slow to develop, it's never drags and it's well worth the time spent when everything comes to a conclusion with a second cataclysmic (and real) event. 

"The Republican River became a four-mile-wide whitewater monster, thrashing its long tail from eastern Colorado to Oxford, Nebraska. Twenty-four inches of rain fell in twenty-four house! Bridges split and splintered apart. Hundreds of miles of road got washed out. The river poured forward with enough force to carry cars and rooftops. Walls floated away. Friends became cadavers in outfits we recognized, floating beside tractors and drowned cattle. Bodies were seen riding on the crest through the middle of towns, their shy faces staring underwater even as we screamed their names."

At a time when I was really struggling to focus on any book, this one grabbed me and kept me reading. The concepts, the history, the characters, the writing, the pacing, the creativity all worked to make this book that will stay with me a long time. As much as it is set in the past, it is filled with lessons to be learned, not the least of which are to see how history is repeating itself and how human nature remains unchanged. Russell leaves us with hope - we see that there is an opportunity to learn from the past and to change our future. If only we will listen. 

One final note, if you read this book, make sure you read the Land Lost Acknowledgment and the Author's Note at the end. 

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

400 pages

Read by Louise Erdrich - 709 minutes

Published November 2021 by HarperCollins Publishers

Publisher's Summary: 

Louise Erdrich's latest novel, The Sentence, asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading "with murderous attention," must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning. 

The Sentence begins on All Souls' Day 2019 and ends on All Souls' Day 2020. Its mystery and proliferating ghost stories during this one year propel a narrative as rich, emotional, and profound as anything Louise Erdrich has written.

My Thoughts: 

I was gifted this book last year at my book club's annual Christmas party and thought it would make a great choice for my book club for this year. I mean, Louise Erdrich always gives you a lot to think about and talk about, right? Hmmm, not so much for my book club; no one else was all that thrilled with this one. Which made me the odd man out, because I really enjoyed it, despite what I perceived to be its flaws. 

I'd be interested to find out when Erdrich began writing this book because it feels a bit like she might have started it in 2019, intending it to be one book, and then 2020 arrived and the book went an entirely different way. There are, in fact, a lot of different kinds of book within this one. It begins with a kind of tragicomic crime escapade that results in Tookie being incarcerated, sentenced to 60 years. Which, of course, made me immediately think this book had veered into a completely different direction. It did, just not the direction I expected. It's a story of redemption, it's a ghost story, there's a supernatural element, it's an homage to books and reading, it's a love story, and, for a time, there's an element of nonfiction. In lesser hands, this could have been a disastrous mess. Even as skilled as Erdrich is, it sometimes felt a bit disjointed. But I was willing to forgive Erdrich that because I was so invested in these characters. 

As always, Erdrich explores native culture and the Indigerati (her term for urban, intellectual Native Americans). To that end, she talks about the foods (including the commodity foods that the government handed out), traditions, solidarity with black people, and white appropriation (there are two characters who seem unable to understand the boundaries). 

This book touches on so many themes: racism, Erdrich uses the ghost to explore hauntings in all of its forms (personal pasts, colonial haunting and how it has played out): 

"Think how white people believe their houses...are haunted by Indians, when it's really the opposite. We're haunted by settlers and their descendants. We're haunted by the Army Medical Museum and countless natural history museums and small-town museums who still have unclaimed bones in their collections." 

The Sentence is not just the title of this book; it is a running theme. We start with Tookie's sentence to prison ("This light word lay so heavily on me.") then the sentence in language, many of which play an important part in the book. There is the sentence in a book that Tookie believes killed Flora, the sentence that Tookie believes will cause Flora to pass on, the sentence that actually does cause Flora to leave the book store, the sentence that Pollux waits years to hear Tookie say, and the final sentences of the book, "The door is open. Go." Finally, there is the death sentence given to George Floyd and the hundreds of thousands who died of Covid. 

I loved that books saved Tookie in prison, that they became so important during 2020 that bookstores were considered essential, that a book plays such an important role in this novel, and that the book store is a central fixture of the novel. The books in the novel forge relationships, unveil history, bring hope. 

An interesting bit in this book is that the bookstore Tookie works in is Birchbark Books, owned by a woman named Louise. Yes indeed, Erdrich owns a bookstore of that name in Minneapolis. This was a listen/read combo for me and I don't think you could go wrong either way. If you listen, try to find the book list that Erdrich includes at the end of the book. My to-be-read list exploded! 

Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot

Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot

124 pages

Published February 2018 by Catapult 

Publisher's Summary: 

Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself hospitalized and facing a dual diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder and bipolar II disorder, Terese Marie Mailhot is given a notebook and begins to write her way out of trauma. The triumphant result is Heart Berries, a memorial for Mailhot's mother, a social worker and activist who had a thing for prisoners; a story of reconciliation with her father―an abusive drunk and a brilliant artist―who was murdered under mysterious circumstances; and an elegy on how difficult it is to love someone while dragging the long shadows of shame.

Mailhot trusts the reader to understand that memory isn't exact, but melded to imagination, pain, and what we can bring ourselves to accept. Her unique and at times unsettling voice graphically illustrates her mental state. As she writes, she discovers her own true voice, seizes control of her story, and, in so doing, reestablishes her connection to her family, to her people, and to her place in the world.

My Thoughts: 

This book was highly recommended by Lizzi (IG bookish_lizzi), whose book recommendations I've been following since before I began blogging. Lizzi called this a "powerful memoir of fighting to survive and thrive," and said it is "Definitely worth reading." I requested it immediately from the library and picked it up a couple of days later. Then I realized that it was maybe not the book for me just now. But I know myself and knew that if it went back unread, it would likely never be read. I'd forget about it, lost under the mental piles of books that came to my attention after I took it back. 

It is, as Lizzi said, a powerful memoir, painful to read in its rawness. Mailhot grew up on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation in British Columbia and her indigenous culture plays a big part in her writing in so many ways. I'll be honest - I wasn't always sure exactly what Mailhot was trying to say when she went to that place but the emotion of what she was saying was always clear. She is often filled with rage, frequently shocking, always trying to find ways to live with her pain. 

Because this maybe wasn't the right time for me to read this book, I'm not sure it impacted me as much as it might have another time in my life. It meanders and can feel disjointed; but that may have as much to do with the way it was written from her journals, begun when she was hospitalized. It is, for sure, an eye-opening account of the ways white people have damaged indigenous peoples, creating a ripple effect that carries down through the generations. 

Others have written much more eloquently about Heart Berries. The Guardian reviewer, Diana Evans, says of this book: 

"This is a slim book full of raw and ragged pain, the poisonous effects of sexual abuse, of racial cruelty, of violence and self-harm and drug addiction. But it is not without a wry, deadpan humour and clever derision. Its quiet rage is directed outwards towards the intangible yet definitive (white supremacy, male supremacy), the unjust shape of the world, while a deep tenderness and empathy are shown to those who share in the author’s vulnerability – her sons, her mother, even her father: “I don’t think he was wrong for demanding love – it was the manner in which he asked, and whom he asked that was unforgivable.” Her mother, in all her dysfunction, her societal powerlessness, is portrayed as a kind of quirky triumph of parenting against the odds, serving her children badly cooked wild rice, encouraging them to beat pillows or rugs when misbehaving, “because she wanted us to release our tensions”. The result of this wise yet flailing caring is a spiritual mother-daughter bond that continues beyond the grave."

I would certainly recommend this one - just know what you are getting in to when you begin and read it when your mood is right and you are mentally able to handle it. 

LaRose by Louise Erdrich

LaRose by Louise Erdrich
Published May 2016 by HarperCollins Publishers
Source: purchased for my Nook

Publisher’s Summary:
North Dakota, late summer, 1999. Landreaux Iron stalks a deer along the edge of the property bordering his own. He shoots with easy confidence—but when the buck springs away, Landreaux realizes he’s hit something else, a blur he saw as he squeezed the trigger. When he staggers closer, he realizes he has killed his neighbor’s five-year-old son, Dusty Ravich.

The youngest child of his friend and neighbor, Peter Ravich, Dusty was best friends with Landreaux’s five-year-old son, LaRose. The two families have always been close, sharing food, clothing, and rides into town; their children played together despite going to different schools; and Landreaux’s wife, Emmaline, is half sister to Dusty’s mother, Nola. Horrified at what he’s done, the recovered alcoholic turns to an Ojibwe tribe tradition—the sweat lodge—for guidance, and finds a way forward. Following an ancient means of retribution, he and Emmaline will give LaRose to the grieving Peter and Nola. “Our son will be your son now,” they tell them.

LaRose is quickly absorbed into his new family. Plagued by thoughts of suicide, Nola dotes on him, keeping her darkness at bay. His fierce, rebellious new “sister,” Maggie, welcomes him as a coconspirator who can ease her volatile mother’s terrifying moods. Gradually he’s allowed shared visits with his birth family, whose sorrow mirrors the Raviches’ own. As the years pass, LaRose becomes the linchpin linking the Irons and the Raviches, and eventually their mutual pain begins to heal.

But when a vengeful man with a long-standing grudge against Landreaux begins raising trouble, hurling accusations of a cover-up the day Dusty died, he threatens the tenuous peace that has kept these two fragile families whole.

My Thoughts:
I had no idea, going into this book, that it was part of a trilogy. As it turns out, I’ve read the other two books, The Plague of Doves and The Round House. But this never felt like the final chapter in a trilogy (although there are characters that have carried over, it is not essential to know their prior stories). The trilogy is less about specific people and more about the lives of the Ojibwe people who live in North Dakota. Each of the books has given me a wealth of interesting characters and plenty to think about. As much as I really enjoyed The Round House, I think LaRose impressed me even more.

It’s a book that takes readers on a journey into the past to try to explain the present, an idea that is more of a key to all of our lives that we generally acknowledge. Every one of us is, in some way, who we are because of our ancestors. The Native Americans, it seems, are just infinitely better at recognizing and honoring their ancestors.

Young LaRose Iron is not the first LaRose in his family; there were four before him, including his grandmother. In looking back at those women, we learn much about the ways of Native Americans when the Europeans first began to settle this continent and the mystical beliefs they held, beliefs their descendants struggle to hold onto. We see how the Europeans worked to try to annihilate the Native American way of life and how that system continues to impact them today. All of that is a bigger picture, set up by Erdrich to help us understand what is happening to these families.

I’m writing this review before my book club meets to discuss this book. I’m looking forward for what those ladies have to say about the characters in this book and its many themes. What do they make of Nola’s grief, which just keeps spinning deeper, despite having been given LaRose? Who are the “bad” guys in the novel? What must it be like to live together with the descendants of the people who conquered your people and who continue to keep their foot on the throat of your people? What of the themes of revenge (which so many here are trying to exact), motherhood, family, addiction, heritage, and forgiveness? And what role does food play in the book? Until I got to a party at the end of the book, it hadn’t occurred to me how much food had been talked about in this book. When it did, I had to stop and think about where Erdrich had included food and why.

This is review feels rambly and disjointed as I reread it but I’m not sure how much more cohesive it would be if I took longer to put together my thoughts. Erdrich has me thinking in so many different directions. I have a feeling this book will stay with me for some time.

The Round House by Louise Erdrich

The Round House by Louise Erdrich
Published September 2013 by Harper Perennial
Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher and TLC Book Tours

Publisher's Summary:
One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface because Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and thirteen-year-old son, Joe. In one day, Joe’s life is irrevocably transformed. He tries to heal his mother, but she will not leave her bed and slips into an abyss of solitude. Increasingly alone, Joe finds himself thrust prematurely into an adult world for which he is ill prepared.

While his father, a tribal judge, endeavors to wrest justice from a situation that defies his efforts, Joe becomes frustrated with the official investigation and sets out with his trusted friends, Cappy, Zack, and Angus, to get some answers of his own. Their quest takes them first to the Round House, a sacred space and place of worship for the Ojibwe. And this is only the beginning.

My Summary:
Six months ago I listened to Erdrich's The Plague of Doves and was underwhelmed. Still I didn't hesitate when The Round House was offered to me for review, strictly on her name alone. I knew I wanted to give Erdrich another chance; she just had too good a reputation for me not to try her writing again.  

Here's where I make a confession for which I think I'll be forgiven on account of the gushing I'll be doing. I gave myself only two days to read this book. Not on purpose; the date for this review just kind of snuck up on me. That's doable with a book of just over 300 pages if I really clear the decks and that's just what I was prepared to do. Until I started reading The Round House. This is a book that begs to be read slowly. Hence, I have not yet finished it.

The Round House grabbed me from the beginning in part of a compelling story, in part because I was delighted to find some of my favorite characters from The Plague of Doves reappearing here, and in part because Erdrich's wonderful writing.

"Women don't realize how much store men set on the regularity of their habits. We absorb their comings and goings into our bodies, their rhythms into our bones. Our pulse is set to theirs, and as always on a weekend afternoon we were waiting for my mother to start us ticking away on our evening."

I'll check back in later with my final review. In the meantime, please check other opinions on the full tour.  
 
Louise Erdrich is the author of fourteen novels, volumes of poetry, children’s books, and a memoir of early motherhood. She lives in Minnesota and is the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore.