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The Mighty Red

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About this listen

 Longlisted for the 2025 Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction

'A sweeping, tender-hearted epic' Harper's Bazaar
'In the hands of this master storyteller, everything is effortlessly connected. . . Erdrich always finds hope' Oprah Daily
'The Mighty Red might just be a new American classic' Bookpage

In the Red River Valley of 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. Gary thinks Kismet is the answer to his problems. Kismet can't imagine her future, but she will settle for fulfilling his. During a clumsy proposal, Kismet misses her chance to say 'no', and so the die is cast.

Meanwhile Crystal, Kismet's mother, hauls sugar beets for Gary's wealthy family. On her nightly truck drives from the farm, Crystal frets over what the future might hold - both for herself, and her daughter.

Starkly beautiful and vividly written, The Mighty Red is about our tattered bond with the earth, and about love in all of its absurdity and splendour, from one of our greatest living writers.©2024 Louise Erdrich (P)2024 Hachette Audio UK Editors Select Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Heartfelt

Editorial Review

Another gem from a master Midwestern storyteller
I fell in love with Louise Erdrich's novels beginning with the beautifully eccentric The Master Butchers Singing Club from 2003, and have enjoyed her prolific output ever since. She's adept at seamlessly weaving together compelling narratives and urgent issues of the day, from wealth disparity to climate change, from the impact of fracking on the Dakotas to the marginalisation of Indigenous communities. Erdrich continues this trend in The Mighty Red, a layered and tender portrait of a North Dakota farming community reeling from the 2008 financial crisis, navigating betrayals and young love, and reckoning with the ghosts of a recent high school tragedy. Rich in character development and beautifully narrated by Marin Ireland, The Mighty Red is another standout addition to Erdrich's oeuvre.— Sarah U., Audible Editor

All stars
Most relevant
If you’ve read the beartown book or anxious people I feel like it’s a mix of the two just a poor man’s version.

Reminds me of Fredrick backman

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Heart breaking because it is so dull and I set such store on Erdrich's writing. This is not profound, the characters are boring, whiney, illogical. There is none of the enthralling spirituality of her other works in this book.
I feel betrayed that such a talent has been wrested away from me to record stupid people doing stupid things.
I have read everything else she has written. Her earlier works were so poetic, the Painted Drum has unsurpassed passages of wisdom and prose that I often refer people to........the cast of her trilogy Tracks, Bingo Palace and Love medicine feel so real to me decades after meeting them............this book, like reading a seed catalogue written by an enthusiastic ecology student.
Somehow, for me the spirituality isn't there, the profound insights, the unbearable glimpses of love and of sorrow have all disappeared. I am not sure that I would read anything new of hers again such is my disappointment.

Heartbreaking

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