The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich
Louise Erdrich uses the story of young newlyweds to highlight the harm caused by corporate farming and genetically modified crops in her newest novel, THE MIGHTY RED.
Kismet is in love with Hugo, a young man whose mother runs a bookshop in rural North Dakota. She and her mother, Crystal, always dreamt that Kismet would attend college after high school, but somehow, she stumbles into a proposal by jock Gary Geist, whose family runs the largest sugar beet farming operation in the Red River Valley. Before she knows what’s happening, Gary’s mother has planned an elaborate wedding, and Kismet can’t find a way out.
Kismet’s parents are as different as Kismet and Gary. Crystal drives beet truck for the Geist farm and Martin is an underemployed actor with expensive tastes. On the eve of the wedding, Martin leaves town with the church’s renovation funds. Gossipy neighbors speculate that Crystal is involved. The police question her. When Martin fraudulently takes out a mortgage on Crystal’s house, a house she has scraped and labored to pay off, Crystal’s frugality and loyalty to Martin is put to the ultimate test.
Meanwhile, Kismet finds herself trapped in a marriage she never wanted to a man she never loved. Gary, his father, and uncle have a contract with a sugar beet company to use their seeds and insecticide and fertilizer for the greatest yield – but it’s poisoning the land and the water. The birds are disappearing, and the soil cannot be used in Kismet’s small vegetable garden. Gary’s mother has found a companion in Kismet and rarely lets her leave the farm. When Kismet is finally given keys to a vehicle so that she can go visit her mother, she discovers they are keys to a tractor. Undaunted, she rides the tractor into town, though it takes her several hours.
Meanwhile, Hugo is heartbroken that Kismet has married Gary, and gives her a copy of Madame Bovary (a guidebook for adultery, he thinks) before leaving town to work in the oil fields and earn enough money to win Kismet back, ultimately returning to run his mother’s bookshop.
Erdrich addresses the practice of fracking and corporate farming in this comical story of love gone awry. The poisoning of the earth for capitalistic gain is contrasted with a neighbor’s organic farm where Kismet watches the birds dip and swirl into the grain and realizes their absence on the Geist farm. Erdrich recounts the history of the Red River Valley, the land, and the buffalo herds that originally roamed there. In classic Erdrich style, these serious subjects are addressed within the frame of a farcical story that will make readers laugh out loud – a spoonful of sugar beets to make the medicine go down. Erdrich fans will not be disappointed.
This is Lin Salisbury with Superior Reviews. Listen to my author interviews and read all my book reviews and posts at www.superiorreads.com.
