Louise Erdrich w/ Gail Tsukiyama

Join us for a very special evening with Louise Erdrich, one of the most gifted, prolific, and challenging of contemporary Native American novelists. The author of many award-winning novels, including Love Medicine; The Beet Queen, and The Bingo Palace, this is her first novel since the publication of the 2012 National Book Award-winning novel, The Round House.

In LaRose, Landreaux Iron kills his neighbor’s five-year-old son, Dusty Ravich, in a hunting accident. 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 traditionthe sweat lodgefor 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.

What follows 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.

Born to a Chinese mother and a Japanese father in San Francisco, Gail Tsukiyama’s bestselling novels include The Street of a Thousand Blossoms, Women of the Silk, A Hundred Flowers, Dreaming Water, The Language of Threads, The Samurai’s Garden, and Night of Many Dreams.