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Summary
Summary
The third novel in the critically acclaimed Birchbark House series by New York Times bestselling author Louise Erdrich.
Omakayas was a dreamer who did not yet know her limits.
When Omakayas is twelve winters old, she and her family set off on a harrowing journey in search of a new home. Pushed to the brink of survival, Omakayas continues to learn from the land and the spirits around her, and she discovers that no matter where she is, or how she is living, she has the one thing she needs to carry her through.
The Birchbark House Series is the story of one Ojibwe family's journey through one hundred years in America. In a starred review, Kirkus Reviews wrote that The Porcupine Year is "charming, suspenseful, and funny, and always bursting with life."
Author Notes
Karen Louise Erdrich was born on June 7, 1954 in Little Falls, Minnesota. Erdrich grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota, where both of her parents were employed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. She is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. Erdrich graduated from Dartmouth College in 1976 with an AB degree, and she received a Master of Arts in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University in 1979.
Erdrich published a number of poems and short stories from 1978 to 1982. In 1981 she married author and anthropologist Michael Dorris, and together they published The World's Greatest Fisherman, which won the Nelson Algren Award in 1982. In 1984 she won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Love Medicine, which is an expansion of a story that she had co-written with Dorris. Love Medicine was also awarded the Virginia McCormick Scully Prize (1984), the Sue Kaufman Prize (1985) and the Los Angeles Times Award for best novel (1985).
In addition to her prose, Erdrich has written several volumes of poetry, a textbook, children's books, and short stories and essays for popular magazines. She has been the recipient of numerous awards for professional excellence, including the National Magazine Fiction Award in 1983 and a first-prize O. Henry Award in 1987. Erdrich has also received the Pushcart Prize in Poetry, the Western Literacy Association Award, the 1999 World Fantasy Award, and the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction in 2006. In 2007 she refused to accept an honorary doctorate from the University of North Dakota in protest of its use of the "Fighting Sioux" name and logo.
Erdrich's novel The Round House made the New York Times bestseller list in 2013. Her other New York Times bestsellers include Future Home of the Living God (2017).
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8-This sequel to The Birchbark House (Hyperion, 1999) and The Game of Silence (HarperCollins, 2005) continues the story of Omakayas, an Ojibwe girl who in 1852 is now 12 winters old. She and her family have been displaced by the United States government and are looking for a new place to live. When Omakayas and her younger brother become separated from their family during a night hunting expedition, Pinch has a run-in with a porcupine that he decides to keep as his medicine animal. The little gaag does indeed seem to bring them good fortune for a time, and Pinch is thereafter known as Quill. As Omakayas's extended family travels north toward Lac du Bois, where Mama's sister has settled, Erdrich's resonant descriptions of their day-to-day experiences give the narrative a graceful flow. The peaceful rhythms are all too quickly broken, however, when a party of Bwaanag captures two of their men. Soon after, Auntie Muskrat's no-good husband, Albert LaPautre, leads a raid on the small group, making off with all of their provisions, leaving them destitute as the winter months approach. The family finally reaches the big lake, and as they learn to find their places in the larger group, Omakayas must come to terms with her transition to womanhood. The events in this installment will both delight and appall readers. While the novel can stand alone, it will call new readers to catch up on the first two installments. Erdrich's charming pencil drawings interspersed throughout and her glossary of Ojibwe terms round out a beautiful offering.-Kim Dare, Fairfax County Public Schools, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Horn Book Review
(Intermediate, Middle School) This third book (The Birchbark House, rev. 5/99; The Game of Silence, rev. 7/05) about Omakayas starts off excitingly, with the Ojibwe girl and her young brother Pinch swept down the rapids and eventually finding their way back to the family campsite for a Tom Sawyer-like reappearance from the dead. Although animated by the presence of a baby porcupine that Pinch adopts, the book becomes a bit static, slowed by details of "packs of furs and bark packs of manoomin, bags of weyass, dried meat, or pemmican, pots, tanned skins, and bundles of their blankets." The narrative regains strength when a renegade uncle robs the family, leaving them close to starvation as winter closes in. They are saved, but not without a considerable sacrifice that will haunt the followers of Omakayas's journey thus far. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
This third entry in the Birchbark House series takes Omakayas and her family west from their home on the Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker, away from land the U.S. government has claimed. Difficulties abound; the unknown landscape is fraught with danger, and they are nearing hostile Bwaanag territory. Omakayas's family is not only close, but growing: The travelers adopt two young chimookoman (white) orphans along the way. When treachery leaves them starving and alone in a northern Minnesota winter, it will take all of their abilities and love to survive. The heartwarming account of Omakayas's year of travel explores her changing family relationships and culminates in her first moon, the onset of puberty. It would be understandable if this darkest-yet entry in Erdrich's response to the Little House books were touched by bitterness, yet this gladdening story details Omakayas's coming-of-age with appealing optimism. The journey is even gently funny--Omakayas's brother spends much of the year with a porcupine on his head. Charming and enlightening. (Historical fiction. 9-11) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The struggle to survive provides the exciting action in this sequel to The Birchbark House (1999) and The Game of Silence (2005), which takes place in 1852. But the gripping story is also about pain, joy, sacrifice, and surprise. Omakayas, now 12, feels the anguish of displacement as her family, driven from its beloved Madeline Island by white settlers, endures violent raids in the freezing winter and comes close to starvation in its search for a home. Erdrich shows Omakaya's love for her mischievous little brother, as well as her barely controlled jealousy of her sister. Always there is her bond with tough elderly Old Tallow, who rescued Omakayas as a baby and has loved her ever since. The question now is whether Old Tallow will survive, and for the first time, Omakayas hears her mentor's childhood story including the shocking brutality she endured, which helped make her so strong and nurturing. As in the previous books, Erdrich weaves in Ojibwa culture and language, defining the terms in an appended glossary, and she includes her own black-and-white sketches, which express her affection for small daily things. Based on Erdrich's own family history, this celebration of life will move readers with its mischief, its anger, and its sadness. What is left unspoken is as powerful as the story told.--Rochman, Hazel Copyright 2008 Booklist
Excerpts
Excerpts
The Porcupine Year Chapter One Night Hunting Bekaa! Bekaa! Omakayas froze and held tight to her paddle with one hand. She was trying to keep the canoe absolutely still while her younger brother, Pinch, balanced with his bow and arrow. With the other hand she held a torch of flaming pine pitch. Wait, higher! Omakayas and her brother had inched close to an old buck deer onshore. Eyes glowing, it gazed, curious and still, into the light of their torch. Omakayas's arm ached, trying to keep the canoe braced in the river's current. But she heard the faint high-pitched creak of the bow as her brother drew back the string and arrow, and she did not move one muscle, even when a drop of blistering pitch fell onto her arm. Tsssip! Tonggg! The arrow flew, the bowstring quivered. Hiyn! Hiyn! Aaargh! As the deer crashed through the trees, Pinch shouted in rage and disappointment. "Your fault! You let us drift!" Pinch dropped his bow with a clatter and jerked around to blame his sister, rocking the boat. Indignant and offended, Omakayas relaxed her arms. The canoe swerved, the torch wavered, and over the edge went Pinch. His thunking splash resounded through the trees onshore and made further night hunting worthless. Pinch came up spouting water--late spring runoff. The icy cold doused some of his heat, but he was still mad and ready to fight, especially once Omakayas hooted at him, laughing at the way he had gone over the side, arms out, flailing. She put out the torch with a hiss and expertly guided the canoe just out of his reach. Although they were allowed to go out night hunting, they were not supposed to go far from their family's camp. "My fault, 'na? Do you want a ride or not?" Pinch tried to lunge through the water at her, but Omakayas paddled just beyond his grasp. "Remember what Deydey said? A good hunter never blames another for a missed shot." Pinch stopped, treading water, his dark round head just barely visible in the moonlight. All of a sudden, he was tugged farther downstream. "Hey!" Pinch yelled in surprise just as Omakayas felt the canoe move toward him, as though propelled by an unseen hand. "Watch out, the current's . . ." His words were swept off. Although Omakayas dug her paddle into the water, stroking backward, the canoe sped smoothly along, so fast that she caught up to Pinch immediately. Desperate to save him now, she stretched and held out the paddle for him to grasp. He pulled himself in, seriously frightened, and scrambled for his own paddle. But the moment had cost them and now the current was even stronger, ripping along the bank. The river abruptly widened and there was no question of turning around--all they could do was desperately try to slow and guide themselves away from the knots and snags of uprooted trees in the river's flow. These would loom suddenly, only faintly lighted by the moon. The great floating trees were moving too, Omakayas and Pinch realized. Slower and more grandly, perhaps, but they were only half hooked together. They were dangerous structures in what had become a singing flood. The children soon realized that they'd been tugged into the confluence of two rivers. Theirs had been slow and meandering, but the second river was carrying spring debris from a powerful rain far upstream. Not only that, but as they swept through the dark faster and faster they heard, ahead, the unmistakable roar of a rapids. No sooner did they hear the rapids, and cry out, than the canoe leaped forward like a live thing. There was no thinking. All went dark. They were rushing through the night on water they couldn't navigate, past invisible rocks, between black shores. All they could do was swallow their screams and paddle for their lives. Paddle with a wild strength they never knew they had between them. Omakayas felt the cold breath of the rocks as their canoe swept inches from a jagged edge, a monstrous jutting lip, a pointing finger of rough stone. As she paddled she cried out for the rocks, the asiniig, to guide them. Asked them in her mind and then called out again. They seemed to hear her. Even in the dark, she could see the rocks suddenly, areas of greater density and weight. Now she flew past them with a flick of her paddle. Steered by instinct. They hissed in her ears and she shifted balance, evaded. Their canoe didn't seem to touch the water. It was as though it had sprouted wings and was shooting down the rapids like a hawk swooping from the sky--and they landed the way a hawk would, too. Brought up in a sudden eddy. An upsweep of calm. But no sooner had they taken a breath than they were snatched back into the roar. This time, the rapids sent them through a dark tunnel that seemed timeless, blind, malevolent. A yawning throat of water. The paddles flew from their grip. They twirled and spun in a sickening vortex. Moonless, mindless, they could only hold each other in the bottom of the canoe and wait for death. As they held each other, falling or flying, Omakayas's one regret was that she'd laughed at Pinch as he fell from the canoe. "I'm sorry," she cried out. He must have heard her because he yelled in grief and terror, "My sister, I'm sorry, too!" Even in the chaos, Omakayas was amazed, trying to remember if Pinch had ever apologized to her before. But then the water threw them at each other like two young buffalo--they butted heads and saw winking lights, then nothing. Only blackness. There was a sudden, eerie silence. "Are we dead?" Pinch's voice quavered. The blackness was so intense they could almost touch it. They were now hardly moving. They still held tightly to the sides of the canoe, but the water had suddenly . . . The Porcupine Year . Copyright © by Louise Erdrich . Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from The Porcupine Year by Louise Erdrich All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
