The Night Watchman

Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel-bearing plant near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a Chippewa council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new "emancipation" bill in the United States Congress. It is 1953, and he and the other council members know the bill isn't about freedom—it is a "termination" that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity.

Since graduating from high school, Pixie Paranteau has insisted that everyone call her Patrice. She works at the plant in a job that pays barely enough to support her mother and younger brother. Determined to find her beloved older sister, Vera, and her child who have disappeared, Patrice makes a fateful trip to Minneapolis that introduces her to unexpected forms of exploitation and violence that endanger her life.

Based on the extraordinary life of Louise Erdrich's grandfather Patrick Gourneau, who carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota to Washington, D.C., The Night Watchman is a majestic work of fiction from one of the most acclaimed writers of our time.