The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
Summary
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.
Book Settings: Twin Cities, MN
Birch Bark Books: The inspiration for the bookstore Tookie works in. It is owned by Louise Erdrich.
Midwest Mountaineering: Where Tookie reconnects with Pollux.
University of Minnesota: Where Kateri attends college.
American Indian Center: Flora has her memorial survive here.
Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA): Hetta dropped out of this college.
Bde Maka Ska: A white woman who frequents where Tookie works told a story about her great-great-grandfather interacting with Indigenous people.
Leech Lake: Where Asema’s family is from.
Red Lake: The wild rice served in a dish at Louise’s New Year’s Eve party is from there area of Minnesota.
Lakewood Cemetery: Flora is immolated at the crematory here.
Plymouth Congregational Church: Louise had a reading here before heading off on her book tour.
Rainbow Chinese Restaurant and Bar: One of the restaurants Tookie and Pollux would get takeout from during the pandemic.
Pow Wow Grounds: This place became an organizing spot for Indigenous people during the pandemic.
Migizi: A communication organization that contains the history of urban Indigenous people in Minneapolis. It burned down during the protest in 2020.
Moon Palace: Tookie’s favorite customer Roland “Dissatisfaction” lived near this bookstore.
Reviews
“A bewitching novel…Strange, enchanting and funny: a work about motherhood, doom, regret and the magic—dark, benevolent and every shade in between—of words on paper.”
— Molly Young, New York Times
'The Sentence is a novel that reckons with ghosts—of both specific people but also the shadows resulting from America’s violent, dark habits.'
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“A deceptively big novel, various in its storytelling styles; ambitious in its immediacy…An absorbing and unquiet novel…that seems ‘essential’ for a deeper take on the times we are living through.”
— Maureen Corrigan, NPR