The Mighty Red

Pulitzer Prize winner Louise Erdrich’s latest novel, The Mighty Red, a captivating multigenerational tale set amid the 2008 financial crisis, begins with a frenzied proposal. Gary Geist, a wealthy and preternaturally lucky football player, asks Kismet Poe, his rebellious Ojibwe classmate, to marry him. This is much to the chagrin of Kismet’s superstitious truck-driver mom Crystal and her nerdy, homeschooled crush Hugo, who would also like to one day make her his bride, if only he could afford a car. As Kismet weighs her options, members of her kooky North Dakota community find themselves taking sides. The teen love triangle is emblematic of the economic divide in the small town where Gary’s parents own the farm that Kismet’s mom, and many others, work on. But in Erdich’s unconventional love story, it’s the titular river—the site of a communal tragedy—that holds the key to understanding Kismet’s heart.

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