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Book Author(s): Louise Erdrich

The Mighty Red

The Mighty Red book cover

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From the publisher:

In Argus, North Dakota, a collection of people revolve around a fraught wedding.

Gary Geist, a terrified young man set to inherit two farms, is desperate to marry Kismet Poe, an impulsive, lapsed Goth who can’t read her future but seems to resolve his.

Hugo, a gentle red-haired, home-schooled giant, is also in love with Kismet. He’s determined to steal her and is eager to be a home wrecker.

Kismet’s mother, Crystal, hauls sugar beets for Gary’s family, and on her nightly runs, tunes into the darkness of late-night radio, sees visions of guardian angels, and worries for the future, her daughter’s and her own.

Human time, deep time, Red River time, the half-life of herbicides and pesticides, and the elegance of time represented in fracking core samples from unimaginable depths, is set against the speed of climate change, the depletion of natural resources, and the sudden economic meltdown of 2008-2009. How much does a dress cost? A used car? A package of cinnamon rolls? Can you see the shape of your soul in the everchanging clouds? Your personal salvation in the giant expanse of sky? These are the questions the people of the Red River Valley of the North wrestle with every day.

The Mighty Red is a novel of tender humor, disturbance, and hallucinatory mourning. It is about on-the-job pains and immeasurable satisfactions, a turbulent landscape, and eating the native weeds growing in your backyard. It is about ordinary people who dream, grow up, fall in love, struggle, endure tragedy, carry bitter secrets; men and women both complicated and contradictory, flawed and decent, lonely and hopeful. It is about a starkly beautiful prairie community whose members must cope with devastating consequences as powerful forces upend them.

Rapid Rating: High.

Profanity includes 31 uses of strong language, around 40 instances of moderate profanity, about 20 uses of mild language, and about 25 instances of the name of Deity in vain. Sexual content includes a fair amount of vulgar references and some brief scenes.

Click here to purchase your copy of The Mighty Red on Amazon. 

About Rapid Ratings

The Rapid Rating option allows Rated Reads to rate more books for content. A quick search of an e-book can show all instances of profanity and at least some of any sexual content or violence. Likely, most Rapid Ratings will be of books rated High.

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