Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Dear Diary; nature has gone haywire

Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich

by Leave a Comment

A young Native American woman learns that she is pregnant in a time of miracles and disaster; nature has gone haywire. Evolution has sped up, gone sideways, and/or stopped all together. Times are trying. It is a particularly frightening time to be a single person with an unplanned pregnancy- especially when religious-esque government agents are collecting and imprisoning pregnant women. Our narrator, Cedar, gives us her story through the pages of her diary. She is keeping accounts of her body and the world around her […]

Men travel faster now, but I do not know if they go to better things.

Death Comes for the Archbiship by Willa Cather

The Last Reports of the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich

by Leave a Comment

I wasn’t entirely expecting to put these two books side by side in my own reading, but both sort of came up in their own way in my selection process. I knew the basics of the Willa Cather novel going in, so I probably internalized the Louise Erdrich novel’s plot as well as I chose. But not only do these novels include a Catholic priest as their central figure, but they also involve that priest working in the American (Mid)West and specifically ministering to Native […]

A Dystopian Future from a Native American Perspective

by 1 Comment

Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich My rating: 3 of 5 stars “Future Home of the Living God” is told in an epistolary style set in a future U.S. in which nature is turning on itself and going through some sort of evolution. Animals are changing into new species and for some reason most women are not able to get pregnant, carry a pregnancy to term, or deliver a baby that can live. There’s a small group of women who are able […]

Snubbed? Sure, but still a winning story

by Leave a Comment

If I am reading my research correctly, Louise Erdrich’s The Birchback House was a 1999 National Book Award Finalist. I know this book was on my shelf for a long time, but I was saving it for the Snubbed category which is no shame as it went up against some AMAZING books. She went up against Kimberly Willis Holt (winner. Yay! LOVED the book/author), Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak (OMG! What a book/author!), Polly Horvath (did not read Trolls but she is very good) and Walter […]

I think she is confused by the way I want her, which is like nobody else. I know this deep down. I want her in a new way, a way she’s never been told about

by Leave a Comment

Louise Erdrich often gets compared to Faulkner, a comparison I know some people bristle at given the popularity of proclaiming to not like Faulkner as if it’s some kind of virtue. This comparison in part comes from her complexity in narrative and her blending of various styles and perspectives within single novels. Her writing is not remotely uniform: some novels are pretty straightforward narratives (like Faulkner) and some of more constructs of myriad forms (like Faulkner) and like Faulkner, her writing is generally one of […]

50: Revisiting a haunting and beautiful dystopian novel

by Leave a Comment

The Chancellor has June’s book club pick for our friend group, and he chose Future Home of the Living God, much to my enormous delight. I read and reviewed this about seven months ago for CBR 9, so I am going to plunk that link right here and just talk about my response for this re-read. Because I loved it even more than the first time I read it. I think we’re going to have a rollicking discussion this month, because a few of us […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo