Night Train

Night Train by Erdrich, Lise. paperback edition. ISBN: 9781566892025.

The most exciting addition to American Indian fiction since Sherman Alexie hit the scene. What does it mean to be a “fully-processed” Indian in America today? In Night Train, Lise Erdrich offers a sharp-humored and powerful primer. Set in the small towns and reservations of northwestern Minnesota and western North Dakota, her literary snapshots capture lives playing out against backdrops of emergency rooms, supermarket aisles, backwoods parties, family breakfast tables, booze-soaked taverns, and sterile but emotionally fraught offices. As the pressures of daily life collide with the insidiousness of history, these stories reveal the personal struggles and small triumphs of people facing the absurdities of bureaucracy, cycles of poverty and addiction, and out-sized notions of Indian legends and culture.