The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

I loved The Night Watchman, so I wanted to get my hands on Erdrich’s new book ASAP. There was a ghost in The Night Watchman and there is a ghost in The Sentence, but they are very different ghosts in very different stories, both rewarding reads.

The Sentence begins on All Souls Day in 2019 and most of the action, all of the ghostly action, occurs in the small bookstore where our main character, Tookie, works. I was so caught up in the story that I didn’t think about the fact that we might be walking right into the pandemic, so it took me by surprise yet again. It seems like 2020 was forever ago, so the confusion, the feelings at that time had dropped a little bit below the raw surface of my consciousness. This brought them vividly back. It will be an excellent record of the time of COVID, pre-vaccine.

And then, of course, comes the murder of George Floyd. Oh, yes. The bookstore is in the Minneapolis area. Our characters are, in the main, Native people, and Tookie’s stepdaughter takes an active part in the protests. This complicated story runs through All Souls Day in 2020. There are secrets to be discovered & this book is masterfully constructed to keep the reader on the edge of her seat.

I listened to the audiobook, which was read by the author.