Off-site: An Evening with Louise Erdrich

We are thrilled to host Louise Erdrich for an off-site event to celebrate the release of The Mighty Red: A Novel. This is an off-site, ticketed event that will be hosted at Senn High School (5900 N Glenwood Avenue).

MASKS ARE REQUIRED. Tickets include a copy of The Mighty Red, which will be picked up when you check in for the event. Louise will pre-sign copies of The Mighty Red! There will not be a book signing after the event. Tickets are nonrefundable.

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.

Louise Erdrich, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, is the award-winning author of many novels as well as volumes of poetry, children’s books, and a memoir of early motherhood. Erdrich lives in Minnesota with her daughters and is the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore.

Accessibility: This event is hosted at Senn High School, which is a fully wheelchair accessible space. Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis. Masks are required. To request ASL interpretation for this event, please email [email protected] by no later than 14 days before the event. For scholarship tickets, other questions, or access needs, please email [email protected].

Host or Publisher Women & Children First