I wanted to like this book, by Louise Erdrich, I really did. Back in May, when I wrote my post on Caddie Woodlawn and was chastised because I wasn’t sensitive enough to the depiction of Native Americans in that book, this one was suggested as an alternative. And I really wanted to like it.

On one level I did. It’s full of passages and descriptions of Native American life in the mid-1800s. The things they did to survive. The relationships they had with each other. The interactions with white people. Omakayas, the main character, works and plays and makes friends with bears and crows and is annoyed by her little brother, Pinch.

But, the problem was: there was no story. Or, rather, there was a story there (a baby girl — Omakayas — is the only one on her island to survive the small pox, is rescued, and eventually helps her adopted family through another bout of the disease) but it wasn’t told well at all. In fact, it was incredibly difficult for me to get through this book because it was, well, boring. They work, they sleep, they argue, they get sick, they survive to get maple sugar in the spring. I didn’t care for any of the characters, not even when baby Neewo dies (it was so surreal that I didn’t feel any emotion at all for anyone). Pinch was supposed to be annoying, but I found him to be downright mean. Even Omakayas, who I felt was supposed to be spunky, fell flat.

At least I can say I tried, right?