Mighty Red

In Argus, North Dakota, a fraught wedding is taking place.

Gary Geist, a terrified young man set to inherit two farms, is desperate to marry Kismet Poe. Kismet is intense and beautiful, a lapsed Goth, and while she can't picture herself in the kind of future that Gary might offer, Gary thinks that Kismet is the answer to all of his problems. During a clumsy proposal, Kismet misses her chance to say 'no' and so, it seems, the die is cast.

But Gary has a rival for Kismet's affection. Hugo - a gentle red-haired giant who works in his mother's bookshop - has been in love with Kismet for years. He has been her friend, confidante and occasinally her lover, but now she is marrying Gary and Hugo is determined to steal her back: moreover he is eager to be a home wrecker.

Meanwhile Kismet's mother, Crystal, hauls sugar beets for Gary's family, and on her nightly runs in her truck along the highway from the farm to the factories, she tunes into the darkness of late-night radio, sees visions of guardian angels, and worries for the future - both her daughter's and her own.

Set against the backdrop of the 2008-9 economic crisis, among the farmland communities of the Red River Valley, The Might Red is an entertainingly tangled love story and a story of ordinary human hope and tragedy: 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 people wrestle with every day in a community deeply connected to the landscape, at the whim of nature and market forces: love is real, money is real, land is real, time is real, and these things all have immeasurable consequences on their lives.

Starkly beautiful like the landscape it inhabits, The Mighty Red is a novel of tender humour, disturbance, and hallucinatory mourning. It is about ordinary people who dream, grow up, fall in love, struggle, endure tragedy, carry bitter secrets. And as with every book this great modern master writes, The Mighty Red is about our tattered bond with the earth, and about love in all of its absurdity and splendour.

A new novel by Louise Erdrich is a major literary event; gorgeous and heartrending, The Mighty Red is a triumph.