Pollux, Tookie’s husband, lavishes attention and care upon Potawtomi customs, which frequently appear throughout the story. Asema and Penstemon, Tookie’s coworkers and friends, are both ambitious, intelligent, and passionate about their Indigenous roots. Other characters in The Sentence are also richly developed. She leers menacingly at the woman who tells a blatantly racist and appropriative tale about her culture and jokingly tells her friend Asema that a dump truck has fallen out of the sky and into her yard, which is why she can no longer speak on the phone. Her narrative style is both matter-of-fact- as with her plain description of body-snatching- and disarmingly charming- like when she confesses her fear of falling out of the Tookie-shaped unit that composes her being. The Sentence is many things at once-an intricate look at Tookie’s struggles and those around her, a fantastical tour of all things literature, and a reckoning with current global events. Ghosts and creatures of Indigenous folklore are also literally and casually sprinkled throughout, and there is also the small matter of a book, also called The Sentence, which haunts Tookie and her friends. The novel focuses on Tookie, an Indigenous woman traumatized by seven years of incarceration and her life as she works at a small bookstore, struggling with the ghosts of her past. Louise Erdrich’s latest novel is delightful for a number of reasons, but I find its main appeal to be the attention she puts into the vibrant characters that populate The Sentence. The beauty of The Sentence lies in its careful, careful details.
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