The Sentence [B0397]

2021 HCDJ. In this stunning and timely novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich creates a wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage, and of a woman's relentless errors. In The Sentence, she 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.

From recent Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "I thought this would be a nice ghost story that forces the protagonist to reckon with themselves - but it is so much more than that. It's also a story of resilience, perseverance, survival and love. The emotional depths this book has taken me through had me gripped."; "A story of an indigenous woman working in a haunted bookstore in Minneapolis during the year of COVID and the George Floyd protests. A time of profound change and emotions that I am still trying to grasp today. This story is not a page turner by any means. However the book feels significant somehow - like it has put into words certain important moments and feelings that I lived through that I don't want to forget. And there are so many poignant passages and lines that flow like poetry."; "My first encounter with Louise Erdrich's writing. There will be many more."