The Night Watchman
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The Night Watchman
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Narrated by:
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Louise Erdrich
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Written by:
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Louise Erdrich
About this listen
Winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
New York Times Best Seller
Washington Post, Amazon, NPR, CBS Sunday Morning, Kirkus, Chicago Public Library, and Good Housekeeping Best Book of 2020
Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich’s grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, DC, this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman.
Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the first factory located 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 on its way to the floor of the United States Congress. It is 1953 and he and the other council members know the bill isn’t about freedom; Congress is fed up with Indians. The bill is a “termination” that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity. How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native Americans “for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run”?
Since graduating high school, Pixie Paranteau has insisted that everyone call her Patrice. Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Patrice, the class valedictorian, has no desire to wear herself down with a husband and kids. She makes jewel bearings at the plant, a job that barely pays her enough to support her mother and brother. Patrice’s shameful alcoholic father returns home sporadically to terrorize his wife and children and bully her for money. But Patrice needs every penny to follow her beloved older sister, Vera, who moved to the big city of Minneapolis. Vera may have disappeared; she hasn’t been in touch in months, and is rumored to have had a baby. Determined to find Vera and her child, Patrice makes a fateful trip to Minnesota that introduces her to unexpected forms of exploitation and violence, and endangers her life.
Thomas and Patrice live in this impoverished reservation community along with young Chippewa boxer Wood Mountain and his mother Juggie Blue, her niece and Patrice’s best friend Valentine, and Stack Barnes, the white high school math teacher and boxing coach who is hopelessly in love with Patrice.
In the Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich creates a fictional world populated with memorable characters who are forced to grapple with the worst and best impulses of human nature. Illuminating the loves and lives, the desires and ambitions of these characters with compassion, wit, and intelligence, The Night Watchman is a majestic work of fiction from this revered cultural treasure.
©2020 Louise Erdrich (P)2020 HarperAudioYou may also enjoy...
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What listeners say about The Night Watchman
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 2023-03-10
Wonderful
Many or the images in this story keep coming back to me. Beautifully written, and great narration.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Juliette
- 2023-01-27
An absorbing, incredible read (listen!)
I just loved everything about this - a powerful and important story, rendered even more so because of its true elements and the connection of the author and narrator to the characters.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Nancy
- 2023-09-28
Words equal imagination
Well written by author and very well spoken by narrator
I didn’t want it to end
Great book.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- greer356
- 2021-04-21
A fascinating story well told
This important story is evidently close to Louise Erdrich's heart. Written in exquisite language, and not at all heavy-handed. Beautifully performed.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Sharon
- 2023-03-10
Powerful
LE has captured the heart and soul of so many in this book. I couldn’t stop listening. Grab a cup of tea (and bannock) for this book.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Eugenia Pavlakos
- 2023-04-28
Beautifully read. Great story.
I enjoyed this book very much. The characters are real, very engaging, and I needed to continue the story in a great binge, to the end.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- CKH
- 2024-03-11
Wonderful Novel, beautifully read.
I was not expecting this to have such strong elements of magical realism, which was wonderfully incorporated into a fictionalised telling of a 1950s fight against Native dispossession in the US. This is a polyphonic novel, but the main points of view are from Thomas, a senior member of the Tribe, who in a space of three months drives countermeasures and personally goes to DC to battle wits against senators who are determined to terminate federal recognition of American Indian tribes, and of his neice Pixie (Patrice) who at 19 is the breadwinner of her family but also yearns to experience more outside her community.
The extreme poverty, sexual abuse, alchoholism, abandonment and disappearance of Native women in the City are all part of the novel, but are not the main focus of the book; what is strong are the love of family and community (which hugely overlap) and the endurance of its characters.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Carolyn Ledwell
- 2022-06-06
Beautifully written…..
What a lovely experience it was to listen to Erdrich’s rich language rendered by a great narrator. A tribute to the richness and endurance of the Chippewa people.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- margaret brown
- 2020-07-12
interesting
I really enjoyed this book I found that the story was great the narrator was one of my favourites and I found it to hold a lot of things that I did not know about the Indians I was pleasantly surprised by this book and would recommend it to anybody it is well worth listening to
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Snow Walker
- 2023-07-07
Easy to listen to
3.5*
Enjoyed the pace of the story. Most of the characters were engaging and well developed. On the whole, though, felt that there were too many branches on the story tree. Despite their stories being vaguely intertwined, too many forced connections take away from the central theme of the "termination." The love story tangents didn't do much for me or the story, distractions, for the most part. Regardless of all the criticism, I love listening to First Nations storytelling. Even more when the authors read their work and put the passion in all the right places. For the most part, that applies here as well, but at times, the various characters just blended to one voice and lacked uniqueness.
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