LaRose by Louise Erdrich

In 1999, tragedy strikes a North Dakota community when Landreaux Iron accidentally kills his neighbor’s son, Dusty Ravich, while hunting a buck. The Iron and Ravich families have always been closely connected. Landreaux and Peter Ravich, Dusty’s father, are friends. Dusty and Landreaux’s son, LaRose, played together. And the mothers of both children are half-sisters.

As Landreaux desperately tries to cope, he relies on Native spirituality and decides to follow an ancient tradition of retribution: he will give LaRose to the Ravich family—a son in place of the one he has killed.

As the years pass, nothing is simple for both families. In time, they agree that LaRose will take turns living with each family. A new normal develops, but a threat looms. An emotionally wounded, cunning man plans his own revenge, seeking to destroy Landreaux because of a past conflict between the two of them.

Erdrich’s suspenseful plot—which is rooted in Native spirituality and shows how injustices perpetrated against Native Americans played out in individuals’ lives for generations to come—skillfully contrasts the destructive path of revenge and the life-giving road of forgiveness. The book contains some vulgar language and several sexually explicit scenes. (HarperCollins)