Thanks to a dear friend from my Stanford cohort, I found myself reading some amazing novels in January. (sorry, amazing is such a pittance word for books that commanded my attention like these.)

In The Night Watchman, Erdrich captures some of her family history as she writes of a tribe on the edge of having less than the nothing they currently inhabit. There’s a fight with the politicians. There are lost children having babies that are found. There’s abuse. There’s happiness. There’s courage. There’s hope. There’s a shit-ton of imagination.

Indian Horse. I can’t even say the level of emotions this book evoked. The ending shouldn’t have caught me unaware, but it did. It did. The kidnapped Indian children of the mid 20th century brings to mind the border wall children stripped from parents. Stripped of their identify and left where? Where exactly? How do they heal? Read this book.

Starlight was actually the beginning of this trilogy. But since it was only available from a Canadian publisher, I had to wait and read the others first with much impatience. Starlight has lost his parents, but he has found the land, and nature and the magic that resides in that connection to heal. With the help of an old white man, Starlight escapes his possible fate in a school and uses it to do good where he can. Including an abused white woman and her child fleeing from the source of their pain. Only they find it is deep in themselves.

Though Starlight was only partially written when the author died, there are suggestions left behind of how it could end. The reader can bring their own hopes to this ending. Or their own despair.