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LaRose: A Novel Audiobook
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Publisher Description
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction
Finalist for the PEN Faulkner Award
In this literary masterwork, Louise Erdrich, bestselling author of the National Book Award-winning The Round House and the Pulitzer Prize nominee The Plague of Doves, wields her breathtaking narrative magic in an emotionally haunting contemporary tale of a tragic accident, a demand for justice, and a profound act of atonement with ancient roots in Native American culture.
North Dakota, late summer, 1999. Landreaux Iron stalks a deer along the edge of the property bordering his own. He shoots with easy confidence—but when the buck springs away, Landreaux realizes he’s hit something else, a blur he saw as he squeezed the trigger. When he staggers closer, he realizes he has killed his neighbor’s five-year-old son, Dusty Ravich.
The youngest child of his friend and neighbor, Peter Ravich, Dusty was best friends with Landreaux’s five-year-old son, LaRose. The two families have always been close, sharing food, clothing, and rides into town; their children played together despite going to different schools; and Landreaux’s wife, Emmaline, is half sister to Dusty’s mother, Nola. Horrified at what he’s done, the recovered alcoholic turns to an Ojibwe tribe tradition—the sweat lodge—for guidance, and finds a way forward. Following an ancient means of retribution, he and Emmaline will give LaRose to the grieving Peter and Nola. “Our son will be your son now,” they tell them.
LaRose is quickly absorbed into his new family. Plagued by thoughts of suicide, Nola dotes on him, keeping her darkness at bay. His fierce, rebellious new “sister,” Maggie, welcomes him as a coconspirator who can ease her volatile mother’s terrifying moods. Gradually he’s allowed shared visits with his birth family, whose sorrow mirrors the Raviches’ own. As the years pass, LaRose becomes the linchpin linking the Irons and the Raviches, and eventually their mutual pain begins to heal.
But when a vengeful man with a long-standing grudge against Landreaux begins raising trouble, hurling accusations of a cover-up the day Dusty died, he threatens the tenuous peace that has kept these two fragile families whole.
Inspiring and affecting, LaRose is a powerful exploration of loss, justice, and the reparation of the human heart, and an unforgettable, dazzling tour de force from one of America’s most distinguished literary masters.
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“As narrator, Erdrich…delivers with equal ease mythic stories, slapstick nursing home exchanges, teen angst, and all-consuming grief. She even gives a rousing volleyball play-by-play with significance well beyond the game on the court. To keep the emotions she, as author, has created, Erdrich, as narrator, digs deep. LaRose is a winning story that will leave listeners cheering. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
— AudioFile
Quotes
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“Erdrich’s richly layered tale brings a host of fascinating characters to life as it builds to its haunting resolution.”
— People -
“Erdrich suffuses the book with her particular sort of magic–an ability to treat each character with singular care, weaving their separate journeys flawlessly throughout the larger narrative, and making each person’s pain feel achingly real.”
— Entertainment Weekly -
“A brutal, ultimately buoyant dramatization of the way unexpected kinships heal us.”
— O, The Oprah Magazine -
“A stunning novel…A heartbreaking tale of love, family, and obligation that spans generations.”
— Real Simple magazine -
“Erdrich has always been fascinated by the relationship between revenge and justice, but…can a person do the worst possible thing and still be loved? Erdrich s answer is a resounding yes.”
— New York Times Book Review (front page review) -
“A masterly tale of grief and love.”
— Washington Post -
“[LaRose] gently insists there are abiding spirits in this land and alternative ways of living and forgiving that have somehow survived the West’s best efforts to snuff them out.”
— Denver Post -
“[Erdrich] takes the native storytelling tradition that informs her work and remakes it for the modern world, stitching its tattered remnants into a vibrant living fabric.”
— Minneapolis Star Tribune -
“Erdrich spins a powerful, resonant story with masterly finesse…memorable and satisfying.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review) -
“The radiance of this many-faceted novel is generated by Erdrich’s tenderness for her characters…A brilliantly imagined and constructed saga.”
— Booklist (starred review) -
“[A] meditative, profoundly humane story…about the emotions men need, but rarely get, from one another.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Awards
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A Kirkus Reviews Pick for May 2016
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An Amazon Editor’s Top Pick for May 2016
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Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award
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A New York Times Bestseller
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Longlisted for the 2017 Carnegie Medal for Literature
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An Entertainment Weekly Best Book of 2016
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Winner of the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction
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About Louise Erdrich
Louise Erdrich, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, is a multiaward–winning author of New York Times bestselling fiction, as well as poetry, short stories, and children’s books. She has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and has won the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. She has received the Library of Congress Prize in American Fiction, the prestigious PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the World Fantasy Award, and American Academy of Poets Prize, among others.