Michaelangelo famously spoke about seeing the angel in the marble and carving until it was set free. I'm convinced that Louise Erdrich has the ability to see the heart of beauty and tragedy in ordinary lives and puts words on pages until the story is set free.

LaRose is another astonishing work of heartbreaking humanity and the third novel in Erdrich's justice trilogy which includes The Plague of Doves and The Round House and takes place in a fictional Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota. The story opens with an unimaginable tragedy. Landreaux Iron is hunting in the woods behind his house when he accidentally kills the son of a neighboring Ravich family. As an act of atonement, he decides to give them his own son, LaRose, to raise as their own.

This book masterfully explores the themes of grief, loss, and guilt as the story of how the members of the two families go through the painful process of acceptance and healing, each in their own way, is interwoven with the story of the first LaRose in a long line of ancestors with the same name. In doing so, this book addresses issues of the trauma inflicted on Indigenous children in residential schools and the exploitation of Indigenous people in science and medicine.

The three books in the justice trilogy are each incredible and fully realized on their own, but as a whole, they form an absolute masterpiece of American literature. Louise Erdrich has become an auto-buy author for me, and I can't wait to devour all of her books.