Lately I've been trying not to read too much about a book before I read it, though I wish I'd read something about this one. If I had just read here or over at Amazon, I would have figured out this was written in almost scraps, as stories, and not been so confused (I listened to it) as the story moved in tiny, episodic pieces. All delightful, well-crafted, and beautiful, but incomplete, at least in terms of what a novel might do.

That said, Erdrich is brilliant in the small moment, the tiny detail, the assembling of place. Her characters are one-offs, original and interesting. While there is a lot of backstory to dig through and character history--and while only the baby at the beginning is finally finished up for us as a person--I admired this novel, this author and her writing.