Wednesday, October 1st 2025 (4-5:30 PM)
Angell Hall 3241
As part of this year's Climate Week programming, the EHW will be co-facilitating a book discussion of Louise Erdrich's latest novel, The Mighty Red, with UM's Sustainability Office. Please join us for what is sure to be a lively discussion and for the rest of the exciting programming during Climate Week. You may find a novel summary and access links to the book below. Should you encounter issues with access, please contact either Patricia Jewell at jewellp@umich.edu or Jace Jung at jacejung@umich.edu
E-book
Audiobook
In Argus, North Dakota, a collection of people revolve around a fraught wedding. Gary Geist, a terrified young man set to inherit two farms, is desperate to marry Kismet Poe, an impulsive, lapsed Goth who can't read her future but seems to resolve his. Hugo, a gentle red-haired, home-schooled giant, is also in love with Kismet. He's determined to steal her and is eager to be a home wrecker. Kismet's mother, Crystal, hauls sugar beets for Gary's family, and on her nightly runs, tunes into the darkness of late-night radio, sees visions of guardian angels, and worries for the future, her daughter's and her own.
Human time, deep time, Red River time, the half-life of herbicides and pesticides, and the elegance of time represented in fracking core samples from unimaginable depths, is set against the speed of climate change, the depletion of natural resources, and the sudden economic meltdown of 2008-2009. The Mighty Red is a novel of tender humor, disturbance, and hallucinatory mourning. It is about on-the-job pains and immeasurable satisfactions, a turbulent landscape, and eating the native weeds growing in your backyard. It is about ordinary people who dream, grow up, fall in love, struggle, endure tragedy, carry bitter secrets; men and women both complicated and contradictory, flawed and decent, lonely and hopeful. It is about a starkly beautiful prairie community whose members must cope with devastating consequences as powerful forces upend them. As with all of Louise Erdrich's books, The Mighty Red is about our tattered bond with the earth, and about love in all of its absurdity and splendor.
