Louise Erdrich seamlessly weaves together a fast-paced, engaging story of young love, manipulative relationships, the environment and secrets in The Mighty Red.
This novel is rich in well-developed characters beginning with Kismet is a bright, sensitive yet impulsive high school senior with plans to leave her small town in the rural Red River Valley of North Dakota. Her best friend is Hugo, a brilliant home-schooled social outcast is in love with Kismet. Gary is the son of the wealthiest family in town and star quarterback. He’s not an enigma but carries a dark secret, and is also in love with Kismet. He’s desperate to marry her believing that she can help him forget that which haunts him.
Yes, there are adults, but the actions of some are less mature than the teens. Gary’s mother and Kismet’s father have their own (unrelated) agendas, which alternate between the comical and sad. Only Crystal, Kismet’s mother, seems to have a logical take on things, until she briefly doesn’t.
The tragic humor Erdrich interjects throughout the narrative is not limited to the relationships, but also to the over-cultivation of the land, land that once belonged to Native Americans and now makes a lucky few rich through sugarbeet farming. There’s no mistaking the irony that Crystal and Kismet are Ojibwe; with the mother driving the crops to the sugar refinery and Kismet as the farmer’s son object of desire.
As critical as the characters are to the storyline, the land is also a significant element.
The Mighty Red
Four Bookmarks
Harper, 2024
372 pages
The Blue Page Special 