The Mighty Red

A Novel

By: Louise Erdrich

Narrated by: 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.

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.

Amazing!

I grew up in the Red River Valley in the 50s I could so relate to this book. The smell of the sugar beet plant during harvest. We lived 15+ blocks away from the plant yet we would close our windows the smell was so horrible. The small planes flying over the fields spreading fertilizer. Later in life my mother getting breast cancer then much later my sister getting ovarian cancer, there was always talk about all the chemicals that were sprayed on the fields all around us, not knowing and wondering how much harm was being done to our bodies.

The earth ain’t no joke

Again, Louise teases out a story with history, magic realism, love, tragedy, facts of life with both people and nature. And the greatest respect for each.

The life of teens growing up near the Red River.

Really about teenagers and their secrets. It wasn’t a fav of mine. Disliked the references to Catholic “

What a story

So good. Took me by surprise, the description was small compared to the scope of the book. I will definitely read more by this author. And listen to more by this reader, she was great.

Chemicals or Nature

I enjoy Louise Erdich's writing style and this book is no exception. Farming, family and the ordinary lives impacted by both

One of Erdrich’s best

I liked the complex characters trying to live within the culture of agriculture while an urban environment puts pressure on a way of life.

To be honest

This is not my kind of book, but I thought I would try it because I grew up in the Red River Valley.
I could not relate with the characters and I also could not relate with the story. It wasn't bad but also wasn't good. It did not compel me to want to read any other of the author's books.

Love this!

I enjoy the narrator and the story really was a nice story. Some sad but nice ending.