Upcoming Books:
March 20
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt 
May 15
The Lowlands by Jhumpa Lahiri 

Award winning author and Book Club Extraordinaire member,  Carol Ferring Shepley introduces her new book Lori's Lessons: What Parkinson Teaches About Life and Love. 
"Law is meant to put out society’s brush fires, but in Native American history it has often acted more like the wind," writes Maria Russo in the Oct. 12, 2012, The New York Times, Sunday Book Review, titled Disturbing the Spirits, review of The Round House by Louise Erdrich. 
Read BExtraordinaire Blog for more reviews on our next book club selection. 
Author Quotes: “The immense difficulty of prosecuting crimes of sexual violence on reservations has haunted me for many years, but I didn't know how to tell the story. I wanted to write it as a suspense novel. How else to include jurisdictional complexity? I didn't want to bore myself. When my main character, Joe, started talking, I knew I had been waiting for him. A writer's gift. Even now I miss writing in his voice and miss working on this book..”
― Louise Erdrich from National Book Foundation Interview, 2012 by Mary Beth Keane

Author Bio:

Louise Erdrich, born in 1954, is from Little Falls, Minnesota. She is an award winning author of novels, poetry and short stories relating to her Native American heritage. She grew up in North Dakota with her Chippewa Indian mother and German American Father. She graduated from Dartmouth and obtained an M.A. from John Hopkins. She returned to Dartmouth as an artist in residence. She met, collaborated and in 1981 married Michael Dorris. They separated in 1995 and he committed suicide in 1997. 
is reading The Round House written by Louise Erdrich for February 20, 2014.

The Round House takes place on a fictitious North Dakota Indian Reservation in the summer of 1988. The story is told through the lens of thirteen year-old Joe Coutts as he seeks justice for his mother, who has been brutally attacked near the sacred round house. 

As the details of the crime slowly unfold, his family’s faith is put to the test. His mother knows who her attacker is but not willing to identify him. Her silence and sadness is too much for Joe. He says, “Can’t you eat? You’d feel better. Can’t you get up? Can’t you…come back to life’.  “No,” she said immediately. Joe and his father struggle to bring the household back to the way it was before.

Joe with focused and stubborn determination puts the pieces of what happened on that fateful day. He relies on help from his friends: Cappy, Zack and Angus to figure it out.  As they get closer to the truth, things become more complicated. The land the crime occurred, technically belongs to the state and is not a part of the reservation. The suspect is white and cannot be prosecuted in the tribal court. A tangle of laws may prevent justice from being served.

It is an unforgettable book of tenderness, violence, sexuality, redemption and healing.