In the night of memory : a novel

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Title:

In the night of memory : a novel

Author:

Grover, Linda LeGarde author.

ISBN:

9781517906504

9781517906511

Physical Description:

211 pages; 22 cm.

Contents:

The surrender of children -- Miskwaa -- Mesabi -- Duluth -- Tannenbaum Green -- Golden Manor -- Ladyslipper House

Subject Term:

Indians of North America -- Fiction.

Foster home care -- Fiction.

Missing persons -- Fiction.

Ojibwa Indians -- Fiction.

Indian women -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

Minnesota -- Fiction.

Summary:

When Loretta surrenders her young girls to the county and then disappears, she becomes one more missing Native woman in Indian Country's long devastating history of loss. But she is also a daughter of the Mozhay Point Reservation in northern Minnesota and the mother of Azure and Rain, ages 3 and 4, and her absence haunts all the lives she has touched--and all the stories they tell in this novel. In the Night of Memory returns to the fictional reservation of Linda LeGarde Grover's previous award-winning books, introducing readers to a new generation of the Gallette family as Azure and Rain make their way home. After a string of foster placements, from cold to kind to cruel, the girls find their way back to their extended Mozhay family, and a new set of challenges, and stories, unfolds. Deftly, Grover conjures a chorus of women's voices (sensible, sensitive Azure's first among them) to fill in the sorrows and joys, the loves and the losses that have brought the girls and their people to this moment. Though reconciliation is possible, some ruptures simply cannot be repaired; they can only be lived through, or lived with. In the Night of Memory creates a nuanced, moving, often humorous picture of two Ojibwe girls becoming women in light of this lesson learned in the long, sharply etched shadow of Native American history.

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Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Bayport Public Library	FICTION GRO	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Oakdale Library	FICTION GRO	Searching... Unknown
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury)	FICTION GRO	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Stillwater Public Library	FICTION GRO	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Stillwater Public Library	FICTION GRO	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

Winner: Northeastern Minnesota Book Award - Fiction
Upper Peninsula Publishers & Authors Association U.P. Notable Book Award

Two lost sisters find family, and themselves, among the voices of an Ojibwe reservation

When Loretta surrenders her young girls to the county and then disappears, she becomes one more missing Native woman in Indian Country's long devastating history of loss. But she is also a daughter of the Mozhay Point Reservation in northern Minnesota and the mother of Azure and Rain, ages 3 and 4, and her absence haunts all the lives she has touched--and all the stories they tell in this novel. In the Night of Memory returns to the fictional reservation of Linda LeGarde Grover's previous award-winning books, introducing readers to a new generation of the Gallette family as Azure and Rain make their way home.

After a string of foster placements, from cold to kind to cruel, the girls find their way back to their extended Mozhay family, and a new set of challenges, and stories, unfolds. Deftly, Grover conjures a chorus of women's voices (sensible, sensitive Azure's first among them) to fill in the sorrows and joys, the loves and the losses that have brought the girls and their people to this moment. Though reconciliation is possible, some ruptures simply cannot be repaired; they can only be lived through, or lived with. In the Night of Memory creates a nuanced, moving, often humorous picture of two Ojibwe girls becoming women in light of this lesson learned in the long, sharply etched shadow of Native American history.

Author Notes

Linda LeGarde Grover is professor of American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth and a member of the Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe. Her novel The Road Back to Sweetgrass (Minnesota, 2014) received the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers Fiction Award as well as the Native Writers Circle of the Americas First Book Award. The Dance Boots , a book of stories, received the Flannery O'Connor Award and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, and her poetry collection The Sky Watched: Poems of Ojibwe Lives received the Red Mountain Press Editor's Award and the 2017 Northeastern Minnesota Book Award for Poetry. Onigamiising: Seasons of an Ojibwe Year (Minnesota, 2017) won the 2018 Minnesota Book Award for Memoir and Creative Nonfiction and the Northeastern Minnesota Book Award.

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Grover, a member of the Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe, returns to the fictional Mozhay Point reservation (The Dance Boots and The Road Back to Sweetgrass) in northern Minnesota in this beautiful novel about powerful Ojibwe women working to unite their tribe and heal their families. Loretta Gallette, drowning in alcoholism and poverty, surrenders her three- and four-year-old daughters, Rain Dawn and Azure Sky, to the county and disappears. The story follows the children as they move through foster homes and are abused and neglected. Eventually, due to the persistence and determination of Loretta's tribe, the Mozhay nation, as well as the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (a federal law that gives tribal governments exclusive jurisdiction over tribal children in matters of custody), the young girls are brought home to their tribe. As the girls struggle with the haunting absence of their mother and the emotional and physical damage from living in nightmarish foster care homes, they find comfort and strength-mainly from the women-of their home reservation. The girls hear family stories of strife and love; the broken childhood of their mother; the depression that eats at their uncle Junior, a Vietnam vet; the loss of tribal lands to white settlement; and the struggles many have had with alcohol, divorce, and domestic abuse. With gorgeous imagery and verdant prose, LeGarde Grover's novel lays bare the pain and loss of indigenous women and children while simultaneously offering a ray of hope. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

Grover, an award-winning author and professor of American Indian Studies, here returns to the fictional northern Minnesota reservation on which her previous moving and thought-provoking novels and stories are set. Loretta Gallette, single, poor, and alcoholic, is finally forced to surrender her two young daughters, Rainfall Dawn and Azure Sky, to the county. The first half of Grover's multigenerational story follows the girls from one loveless foster home to another as they struggle to remember their mother. The larger story is that of the reservation Loretta left behind, and those who remain there after her disappearance as one of the many Indian women who dropped off the face of the earth without anyone even noticing for the longest time. Eventually, distant family members come together and request the return of the girls to the tribe under the terms of the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act. There the girls grow up in a safe and loving cocoon unlike anything they had experienced. The tragic legacy of Indian boarding schools, including Rainy's fetal alcohol syndrome, hovers over Grover's sad but ultimately uplifting tale.--Deborah Donovan Copyright 2019 Booklist

Library Journal Review

Grover's second novel (after The Road Back to Sweetgrass) focuses on Rainfall Dawn and Azure Sky, who as toddlers are surrendered to the state by their mother, Loretta. They experience first a middling foster home, then an abusive one. They're barely into their teens when their Ojibwe family finds them and through the new Indian Child Welfare Act requests their return. Rainy and Azure then move to Duluth, MN, and are reintroduced to their indigenous roots. This upswelling of unaccustomed love and belonging changes everything. When they're taken to a powwow at the Mozhay Point Reserve soon after, the connections to family and tradition are moving and affirming. After this high point, the conclusion quickly spans the characters' later lives. VERDICT Told with vibrancy by an Ojibwe professor and poet, this own voices story of Ojibwe girls in a situation only too common for indigenous families shouldn't be missed. Recommended for readers seeking contemporary takes on indigenous life and those who enjoy family sagas containing hope and beauty alongside sadness.-Melanie Kindrachuk, Stratford P.L., Ont. © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Summary

Summary

Author Notes

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Booklist Review

Library Journal Review

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