A review by laura_corsi
The Round House by Louise Erdrich

4.0

Joe Coutts is a kid of 13 living on the Chippewa reservation in Minnesota. He has an ideal mother and father who try their best to make things better for their people and take good care of their only son, until one day his mother doesn't come home as expected. When they go look for her, they find that she has been attacked and raped and barely escaped with her life. Joe looks to his father the judge to make things right, however, over the course of the summer he comes to realize that justice for the Chippewa/Obijwe nation is hard to find. We see the investigation into his mom's case through the eyes of a boy on the cusp of manhood. One minute he is all boy and teenager and the next minute he is discovering adult truths and hardships that he barely understood until now. Then, in one unbelievable instant he is a different Joe Coutts entirely. A hauntingly brilliant coming of age story.