The sentence : a novel

Title:

Author:

Summary:

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.

Edition:

First Harper large print edition.

Physical Description:

499 pages (large print) ; 23 cm

Genre:

Ghost stories.

Large type books.

Paranormal fiction.

Subject Term:

Bookstores -- Fiction.

Haunted places -- Fiction.

All Souls' Day -- Fiction.

Ex-convicts -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

Minneapolis (Minn.) -- Fiction.

Publisher:

Harper Large Print,

Publication Date:

2021

ISBN:

9780063157156

Publication Information:

New York : Harper Large Print, [2021]

Call Number:

LP ERDRICH

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607003584029	Large Print Fiction	ERDRICH Louise	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

"Dazzling. . . . A hard-won love letter to readers and to booksellers, as well as a compelling story about how we cope with pain and fear, injustice and illness. One good way is to press a beloved book into another's hands. Read The Sentence and then do just that."--USA Today, Four Stars

In this New York Times bestselling 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.

Louise Erdrich's latest novel, The Sentence, 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.

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Pulitzer winner Erdrich (The Night Watchman) returns with a scintillating story about a motley group of Native American booksellers haunted by the spirit of a customer. In 2019 Minneapolis, Tookie, a formerly incarcerated woman, is visited at a bookstore by the ghost of Flora, a white woman with a problematic past. Despite being a dedicated ally of myriad Native causes, Flora fabricated a family lineage linking her to various Indigenous groups including Dakota and Ojibwe. Many of the story's characters reckon with both personal and ancestral hauntings: Tookie with a childhood of neglect and her time in prison for unknowingly trafficking drugs; her husband, Pollux, a former tribal police officer, confronts his past experiences of using force after the murder of George Floyd; and Asema, a college student of Ojibwe and Sisseton Dakota descent, pieces together an ominous historical manuscript depicting the abduction of a 19th-century Ojibwe-Cree woman, which Flora's daughter brought to the store. As the Covid-19 pandemic takes hold and the store pivots to mail orders, several of the characters join the protests against police brutality. More than a gripping ghost story, this offers profound insights into the effects of the global pandemic and the collateral damage of systemic racism. It adds up to one of Erdrich's most sprawling and illuminating works to date. Agent: Andrew Wylie, The Wylie Agency. (Nov.)This review has been updated to reflect the final version of the book.

Library Journal Review

Opening on All Souls' Day 2019 and closing on All Souls' Day 2020, thus embracing a year of pandemic and protest, this latest novel from National Book Award winner Erdrich chronicles the experiences of an Ojibwe woman named Tookie who works at an independent bookstore in Minneapolis after her release from prison. Her life changes when the ghost of a recently deceased customer begins haunting the bookstore, pushing her and Ojibwe colleague Asema toward painful personal revelations with deep historical resonance. Meanwhile, Tookie launches a complicated relationship with Pollux, the tribal police officer who had arrested her years previously and has always cared about her. With a 150,000-copy first printing.