Louise Erdrich is one of those authors whose novels --- whether for children or adults --- are always reliably rewarding yet somehow still surprising every time. Her latest is no different. Some of the elements of her prior books, especially her most recent work, that have stuck with me months or even years later are those that address the environment, the climate and the land. So I was pleased to discover that, although THE MIGHTY RED is in many ways a deeply intimate story about the intertwined lives of individuals and families, it also has geography at its center.

This in itself isn’t particularly surprising. The title, after all, comes from the Red River, the famously north-flowing river that forms much of the border between Minnesota and North Dakota before flowing into Manitoba. It also flows among the brief chapters of Erdrich’s book, which at times seem to glide effortlessly between contemporary human dramas and timeless accounts of how the land and its people have both evolved and persisted over eons.

"I was pleased to discover that, although THE MIGHTY RED is in many ways a deeply intimate story about the intertwined lives of individuals and families, it also has geography at its center."

Set primarily during the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis, THE MIGHTY RED focuses largely on three young people, all of whom are about to graduate from high school. Kismet, a one-time goth girl whose father Martin is an ersatz actor and whose mother Crystal hauls sugar beets, loves reading and imagines a different future for herself but can’t quite envision how to get there. Gary, a star football player, is convinced that marrying Kismet is the surest way to repair his life after a tragedy completely upended it, a conviction that his mother seems to share. And Hugo, a home-schooled kid, works at his mom’s bookstore and not so secretly pines after Kismet.

The combination of Gary’s pathetic persistence and Martin’s sudden disappearance --- which also creates a mini financial crisis not only for the family but also for the entire town when it appears he’s absconded with the church building funds he was entrusted to oversee --- finally wears Kismet down, and she agrees to wed Gary. This propels Hugo, in his despair, to decide that faking his age and credentials and heading out to the oil fields of western North Dakota to seek his fortune is the only way to win Kismet back.

This synopsis makes it sound like THE MIGHTY RED is a coming-of-age drama centered on a love triangle, which in some ways it is, but it’s also so much more. It’s a portrait of a farming community besieged by change, of younger generations of farmers beginning to imagine a future beyond the sugar beets that have depleted the soil and the toxic pesticides and herbicides that have devastated not only the ecological balance but also their parents’ health. It’s an account of a town trying to heal from a horrific loss that few people talk about and even fewer fully understand. It’s about finding ways to make the best possible choices from the few available --- and living with the consequences either way.

The novel is laced with gorgeous passages that capture Erdrich’s love for this place, affection for the strangeness of its river, grief for the damage that farming and mining have wrought, and hope that there might be a better way forward. At one point, Gary’s friend, Eric, invites Kismet to sit at the edge of a field that he and his family are working to revert back to original prairie. There they watch a phenomenon that Eric identifies as “the vesper flight,” when birds amass at sunset to feed on insects: “Their intricate blur of flight rose to a frenzied joy so dark and dazzling that Kismet was lost in emotion…. [S]he felt wobbly and strange, as though she too had been flying.”

What surprised me about THE MIGHTY RED, however, was its moments of humor. The accounts of a peculiar bank robber dubbed the “Cutie Pie Bandit” are as funny and inventive as the unlikely thief’s various disguises. These episodes not only temper the darkness that haunts Gary, in particular; they also serve to make this world that Erdrich has captured feel robust, layered and profoundly real.