Customer Reviews

Perma Red

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In the 1940s on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana, Louise White Elk finds herself pulled in opposite directions. She knows that Baptiste Yellow Knife is considered the local bad guy and she has known that since he blew some weird white powder into her face when she was nine. Still she finds the lure from the excitement that Baptiste generates by dancing to his own drum hard to resist. Like a moth to the light she is drawn to Baptiste though her brains screams not go down that path because she has experienced his abusive selfishness.

On the other hand married police officer Charlie Kicking Woman also struggles with the pull of two worlds as he tries to enforce the law. Though married, he desires Louise, but does his best to hide his feelings for the enigmatic woman. Hanging over this potential triangle is the impact of Harvey Stoner who owns everything and is willing to use his material advantage to "buy" what he covets, but will that include murder?

PERMA RED is an insightful period piece that works at its best when Charlie, Baptiste, and Louise stand on center stage and either interact or fail to relate. Whenever Harvey or Charlie's wife enters the engaging story line's "sacred" triangle, they seem to disjoint the plot as intruders. Still, Debra Magpie Earling paints a discerning portrait of 1940s life on a reservation starring three strong key characters.

Harriet Klausner

Perma Red is a book I greatly enjoyed, though I don't believe it would be a book everyone could appreciate, that's why I gave it three stars, which should actually be 3.5 stars or 3.75 stars. If it were me alone, I would have given Debra Magpie Earling and Perma Red five stars *****. Let me see if I can further explain...
I picked up the book because I drive through the all the towns she writes about in this novel when I go to the Flathead Lake each summer; threfore, I knew exactly where she was talking about when she talks about Dixon and Perma, Kailspell, and Polson. So, I loved it because I could relate to the area...the Flathead River and the dangerous roads are exactly as she describes them. And describes them and the books characters she does...avidly. This book, so full of description, takes the reader into the fields and mountains Louise runs through...through the doors of the homes on the reservation and into the lives of three (perhaps four) characters so detailed and intertwined, that I thought I could perhaps run into them again. The souls, desrires, and weaknesses of Baptiste, Louise, and Charlie, (and Harvey)are placed throughout the novel so the reader never knows more than they should before the story unfolds. More than that, their downfalls are human.
One reviewer said this book has a lot of methaphors, and they are right...just look at the title and then read the book...you will understand what I mean. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't buy the book. Quite contrary, I would say.
I liked this book enough to share it with my friends, and family, and with the book club I belong to.
As I stated earlier, this isn't necessarily a novel one would pick up right away. However, if you want something different to read, and give the book the chance it deserves, I believe you will remember Louise as a fierce surrivor--someone you know has seen "it all" first hand. Further, you will remember this book (hopefully) for the beauty and tragedy it brings to you.

Okay, I don't get the Publishers Weekly review -- or, for that matter, the customer who got irritated with the metaphors. I didn't find the relationships contrived at all -- and I didn't find the metaphors overwhelming. Yes, this is literary fiction, but for all that the story caught me up, the settings made me once again long to see Montana (a lifelong wish) and the characters seemed real and understandable. I loved the look into a different culture and time. The last scene in the novel (and no, I won't spoil it for you) still sings in my brain twenty-four hours after I closed the back cover.

I read through a few of the reviews and was a bit surprised with the comment that Louise's relationship with Harvey was contrived among other things. I was completely absorbed in this novel and felt that it was an artfully told story, I would give it a 6 if possible. I grew up in that area, going to high school in Missoula. My parents live on the Flathead Reservation and my sister went to high school in St. Ignatius. When other high schoolers were taking French and Spanish, she was learning Salish. I am a very white skinned, blue eyed, freckled decendant of Northern Europeans. My father is a true, genuine cowboy and cattle rancher. This book pulled me in not only because of the amazing way Earling captured the sights and smells of my home, but because of the undercurrent of feeling between the peoples living on the reservation, whites, Indians and those who didn't belong to either group because they belonged to both. At first when I put the book down I felt unsatisfied. I wanted to know what happened to Hemaucus Three Dresses. I think Earling's point in leaving that a loose end was that she was just an Indian and therefore disposable and that probably no one would ever invest the time and energy into finding out what happened to her. If it was a white man who killed her, well, she was just a dirty Indian. If it was an Indian, well, just chalk it up to internal Indian justice. I wanted Louise to make better choices. I believe her choices were rooted in hunger, survival and a self-loathing fostered by the nuns of Mission. It is completely plausible that she ends up spending so much time with Harvey the white land developer because in him there is a little hope of change. There is no love on either side of this "romance" and I think that is why a reviewer felt it contrived. He was using her for his pleasure. She was using him for an occasional hot meal, a chance to briefly feel special and the tiniest sliver of a possibility that he might take her away from the reservation. Mostly she was resigned to the fact that nothing would improve for her. The two Indian men in the story, Charlie Kicking Woman and Baptiste Yellow Knife are struggling with the same demons in profoundly different ways. In the end they come to the same resolution I think. Charlie is a policeman, second class citizen among the other officers, someone trying to behave like a white man and be better than the other Indians. It is a lonely, hated place to be. Baptiste chooses to return to the old Indian ways, starting with refusing to speak English at school, resulting in being locked in a store-room by the nuns and mysteriously escaping. He drinks because he is told he can't. He becomes mean and scary, even to other Indians. Louise is a bit of a surprise and unpredictable. She seems resigned to a hard life but when it counts she's a fighter, and she fights HARD.

As far as the metaphores, I was constantly amazed at her ability to take incongruous words and put them together to create a picture that was completely understandable. She had me tasting colors and smelling songs. Amazing. She often used the opposite of what she was describing to illustrate the point. For example: Baptiste's mother's house becomes lighter and lighter the way a tarp gets darker as it gets wet. Completely opposite but what a visual that really expresses a gradual lightening.

I absolutely loved the book. I highly recomend it. (By the way, the magazine reviewer was wrong, there are 4 men interested in Louise. Two are Indian, two are white: Baptiste, Charlie, Harvey and Jules the cowboy). They each see something in her that draws them.

There are lines in this novel that stopped me in my tracks. The harshness, beauty, violence and forgiveness of the land brilliantly parallel Earling's characters and story. Haunting and magnificent.

Any contemporary American Indian author worth her salt is bound to push the Anglo reader out of their comfort zone. Accurate portrayal of the lifestyle and circumstances of 21st century Indians necessarily involves portions of poverty, chemical dependence, and the torturous constant dissonance of incompatible cultures. Earling gives us all of that and much more in her maiden literary accomplishment. Make no mistake about it - this book is designed to damage your comfortable illusions. If the cultural icon Baptiste seems at times unbelievable, it is because, as a representation of the death throes of a once proud culture, he must be larger than life - at the same time as he is pathetic in his helpless struggle with the imported vices of the European invasion. Our protagonist, Louise, epitomizes the modern Indian (perhaps women generally) - alternately abused and protected by the white world and unsure just where she belongs or how she should act. You will better understand your complicity in the undoing of a valuable and noble culture if you have the heart to read this novel cover to cover, but if that's too heavy for you, just sit back and enjoy the powerful poetic telling of tales that is a hallmark of this genre. Earling will just get better and soon I hope. I'm ready for the next one.

"Perma Red" is not a romance novel, but it is a love story. Not the kind of love that makes one feel warm and optimistic, but love that consumes the characters in the novel; the kind of love that breaks up a marriage and is seldom present without violence. At the center is the young, fiery, untamable Louise White Elk, who cannot be controlled by the three men in her life: violent, dangerous Baptiste Yellow Knife; pathetic, lovesick Charlie Kicking Woman; or wealthy, arrogant Harvey Stoner. Each longs to possess Louise, failing to realize that such a thing is impossible.

The characters in "Perma Red" are superbly written; they are dark, animal, flawed, real, and completely compelling. There's no clear hero. Where there is violence and death in the novel, it is senseless and thought-provoking. You will never doubt the authenticity. The stark portrait of reservation life is neither flattering nor hopeful, but it is tragically genuine.

In an interview the author, a professor at the University of Montana, tells that "Perma Red" was 10+ years in the making and scaled down from a manuscript of over 1,000 pages; in short, a real labor of love. I cannot imagine that the book was more powerful in its original form, since this version is so strong. I recommend it highly and hope the author publishes more soon.

Perma Red is a wonderfully captivating look into the life of a young woman struggling to find a way out of and Indian reservation in Montana. The reason for the ambivelent romance between Louise (the main character) and Baptiste Yellow Knife becomes evident as the book progresses. Charlie Kicking Woman also gives us some insight into what is was like to exist as a Native American in the 1940s.

The prose in this book is so beautiful, I could hardly put it down. It is rare to find a book so eloquently written with such a rich and engrossing plot.

Thank you Debra Magpie Earling!

captivating use of smell and senses recreated in a rich and heartrending tapestry. Coincidence that most people that like this reading would also like James Welch who lived in the same community up until his fairly recent passing, or shared experiences? I've been searching for contemporary fiction writers who create a richer and more surprising experience than most popular works provide. Debra nails it.

I loved Perma Red, and was sad to see it end. Debra Magpie Earling's writing is stunning; I found myself reading, and re-reading her beautiful sentences. Thank you!