
Enjoy fast, FREE delivery, exclusive deals and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery
Amazon Prime includes:
Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.
Amazon Prime members enjoy:- Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
- Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
- Instant streaming of thousands of movies and TV episodes with Prime Video
- A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
- Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
- Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access
Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.
Buy new:
$12.59$12.59
FREE delivery: Wednesday, June 7 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon.
Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com
Buy used: $8.94
Other Sellers on Amazon
+ $4.87 shipping
95% positive over last 12 months
+ $0.75 shipping
97% positive over last 12 months
+ $3.99 shipping
99% positive over last 12 months

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. Learn more
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.


The Night Watchman: A Novel Paperback – March 23, 2021
Price | New from | Used from |
Audible Audiobook, Unabridged
"Please retry" |
$0.00
| Free with your Audible trial |
Hardcover, Deckle Edge
"Please retry" | $9.99 | $5.20 |
Audio CD, CD, Unabridged
"Please retry" | $15.56 | $9.00 |
Purchase options and add-ons
WINNER OF THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
WASHINGTON POST, NPR, CBS SUNDAY MORNING, KIRKUS, CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY, AND GOOD HOUSEKEEPING BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich’s grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman.
Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a Chippewa Council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new “emancipation” bill on its way to the floor of the United States Congress. It is 1953 and he and the other council members know the bill isn’t about freedom; Congress is fed up with Indians. The bill is a “termination” that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity. How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native Americans “for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run”?
Since graduating high school, Pixie Paranteau has insisted that everyone call her Patrice. Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Patrice, the class valedictorian, has no desire to wear herself down with a husband and kids. She makes jewel bearings at the plant, a job that barely pays her enough to support her mother and brother. Patrice’s shameful alcoholic father returns home sporadically to terrorize his wife and children and bully her for money. But Patrice needs every penny to follow her beloved older sister, Vera, who moved to the big city of Minneapolis. Vera may have disappeared; she hasn’t been in touch in months, and is rumored to have had a baby. Determined to find Vera and her child, Patrice makes a fateful trip to Minnesota that introduces her to unexpected forms of exploitation and violence, and endangers her life.
Thomas and Patrice live in this impoverished reservation community along with young Chippewa boxer Wood Mountain and his mother Juggie Blue, her niece and Patrice’s best friend Valentine, and Stack Barnes, the white high school math teacher and boxing coach who is hopelessly in love with Patrice.
In the Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich creates a fictional world populated with memorable characters who are forced to grapple with the worst and best impulses of human nature. Illuminating the loves and lives, the desires and ambitions of these characters with compassion, wit, and intelligence, The Night Watchman is a majestic work of fiction from this revered cultural treasure.
- Print length464 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarper Perennial
- Publication dateMarch 23, 2021
- Dimensions5.31 x 1.06 x 8 inches
- ISBN-100062671197
- ISBN-13978-0062671196
Frequently bought together

Customers who viewed this item also viewed
- The only way to fight the righteous was to present an argument that would make giving him what he wanted seem the only righteous thing to do.Highlighted by 2,565 Kindle readers
- The services that the government provides to Indians might be likened to rent. The rent for use of the entire country of the United States.Highlighted by 2,280 Kindle readers
- When Thomas thought of his father, peace stole across his chest and covered him like sunlight.Highlighted by 1,745 Kindle readers
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Erdrich delivers a magisterial epic that brings her power of witness to every page…We are grateful to be allowed into this world…I walked away from the Turtle Mountain clan feeling deeply moved, missing these characters as if they were real people known to me. In this era of modern termination assailing us, the book feels like a call to arms. A call to humanity. A banquet prepared for us by hungry people.” — Luis Alberto Urrea, New York Times Book Review
"With The Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich rediscovers her genius…This tapestry of stories is a signature of Erdrich’s literary craft, but she does it so beautifully that it’s tempting to forget how remarkable it is…This narrator’s vision is more capacious, reaching out across a whole community in tender conversation with itself. Expecting to follow the linear trajectory of a mystery, we discover in Erdrich’s fiction something more organic, more humane. Like her characters, we find ourselves “laughing in that desperate high-pitched way people laugh when their hearts are broken.” — Ron Charles, Washington Post
"Louise Erdrich's The Night Watchman is a singular achievement even for this accomplished writer. . . Erdrich, like her grandfather, is a defender and raconteur of the lives of her people. Her intimate knowledge of the Native American world in collision with the white world has allowed her, over more than a dozen books, to create a brilliantly realized alternate history as rich as Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi.” — O, The Oprah Magazine
“In powerfully spare and elegant prose, Erdrich depicts deeply relatable characters who may be poor but are richly connected to family, community and the Earth.” — Patty Rhule, USA Today
“Erdrich’s newest novel thrills with luminous empathy.” — Boston Globe
“No one can break your heart and fill it with light all in the same book — sometimes in the same paragraph — quite like Louise Erdrich…She does it again, and beautifully, in her new book…gorgeously written, deeply humane…Erdrich’s writing about the bonds of marriage and family is one of the greatest strengths of her fiction. She captures all the affection, teasing, pain and forgiveness it takes to hold a family together.” — Tampa Bay Times
“What is most beautiful about the book is how this family feeling manifests itself in the way the people of The Night Watchman see the world, their fierce attachment to each other, however close or distant, living or dead.” — Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“Louise Erdrich is one of our era’s most powerful literary voices…In The Night Watchman Erdrich’s blend of spirituality, gallows humor, and political resistance is at play…It may be set in the 1950s, but the history it unearths and its themes of taking a stand against injustice are every bit as timely today.” — Christian Science Monitor
"Erdrich’s inspired portrait of her own tribe’s resilient heritage masterfully encompasses an array of characters and historical events. Erdrich remains an essential voice.” — Publishers Weekly
“National Book Award winner Erdrich once again calls upon her considerable storytelling skills to elucidate the struggles of generations of Native people to retain their cultural identity and their connection to the land.” — Library Journal, Starred Review
“A spellbinding, reverent, and resplendent drama…A work of distinct luminosity…Through the personalities and predicaments of her many charismatic characters, and through rapturous descriptions of winter landscapes and steaming meals, sustaining humor and spiritual visitations, Erdrich traces the indelible traumas of racism and sexual violence and celebrates the vitality and depth of Chippewa life…Erdrich at her radiant best.” — Booklist (starred review)
“In this kaleidoscopic story, the efforts of Native Americans to save their lands from being taken away by the U.S. government in the early 1950s come intimately, vividly to life…A knowing, loving evocation of people trying to survive with their personalities and traditions intact.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“The Night Watchman is above all a story of resilience…It is a story in which magic and harsh realities collide in a breathtaking, but ultimately satisfying way. Like those ancestors who linger in the shadows of the pages, the characters Erdrich has created will remain with the reader long after the book is closed.” — New York Journal of Books
“This clever, artful and compelling novel tells an important story, one to open our hearts and minds. If you’re looking for a book that is smart and discussable, tender and painful, riveting and elegant, you’ll find it in THE NIGHT WATCHMAN.” — BookReporter.com
“Erdrich has chosen a story that is near to her heart, and it shines through on every page…The connection between Erdrich’s characters and the natural world is unbreakable, and some of her most evocative passages are dedicated to this relationship.” — Philadelphia Inquirer
About the Author
Louise Erdrich, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, is the author of many novels as well as volumes of poetry, children’s books, and a memoir of early motherhood. Her novel The Round House won the National Book Award for Fiction. Love Medicine and LaRose received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. Erdrich lives in Minnesota with her daughters and is the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore. Her most recent book, The Night Watchman, won the Pulitzer Prize. A ghost lives in her creaky old house.
Product details
- Publisher : Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (March 23, 2021)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 464 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0062671197
- ISBN-13 : 978-0062671196
- Item Weight : 11.2 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.31 x 1.06 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #8,773 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #17 in Native American Literature (Books)
- #83 in Cultural Heritage Fiction
- #900 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
Videos
Videos for this product
0:41
Click to play video
The Night Watchman: A Novel
Amazon Videos
About the author

Louise Erdrich is one of the most gifted, prolific, and challenging of American novelists. Her fiction reflects aspects of her mixed heritage: German through her father, and French and Ojibwa through her mother. She is the author of many novels, the first of which, Love Medicine, won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the last of which, The Round House, won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2012. She lives in Minnesota.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon
Reviewed in the United States on February 25, 2023
-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
At the heart of the story is Thomas Wazhashk, humble night watchman in a jewel bearing plant. Thomas unearths the real intent of federal legislation that would disenfranchise the Turtle Mountain Chippewa from their land and way of life.
Another major character is Patrice ‘Pixie’ Paranteau, a young woman just coming of age who works in the same plant as her uncle Thomas and who is the object of the affections of local high school math teacher and coach ‘Hay Stack’ Barnes.
It is not Hay Stack who draws Patrice’s affections, though, but Wood Mountain, Hay Stack’s prize protégé and boxer. Barnes persuades Wood Mountain to take part in a grueling fight with the gate receipts going toward paying for a Turtle Mountain delegation who travel to Washington, D.C., to fight the termination bill written by Senator Arthur W. Watkins.
Patrice is also driven to learn what happened to her sister Vera who disappeared in Minneapolis, leaving her baby with friends. Through the course of learning what happened to her sister, Patrice experiences life as a ‘waterjack’ in a seedy nightclub. By her own fierce vigilance she fights off the same forces that sent her sister into the arms of human traffickers.
Millie Cloud, a graduate sociology student, a secondary character, also plays an important role in the novel. Millie’s research of the Turtle Mountain people is key in the delegation’s presentation to Washington lawmakers. All but completely absorbed into white culture, Millie rediscovers her Chippewa roots and, like her fellow warriors, fights for the rights of her people.
Patrice joins the delegation to Washington, only to return to discover that Wood Mountain has found someone else to take her place – someone else very important to her.
Erdrich accomplishes many things in this novel. She weaves seemingly disparate strands into a tightly woven rope at the end. She also shows how common people can accomplish great things when they work together. And, perhaps even greater, she shows the resilience of the Chippewa people and their refusal to be daunted.
This is a wonderfully inspiring novel by a master storyteller who will draw you in and not let you go until the very end.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 25, 2023
At the heart of the story is Thomas Wazhashk, humble night watchman in a jewel bearing plant. Thomas unearths the real intent of federal legislation that would disenfranchise the Turtle Mountain Chippewa from their land and way of life.
Another major character is Patrice ‘Pixie’ Paranteau, a young woman just coming of age who works in the same plant as her uncle Thomas and who is the object of the affections of local high school math teacher and coach ‘Hay Stack’ Barnes.
It is not Hay Stack who draws Patrice’s affections, though, but Wood Mountain, Hay Stack’s prize protégé and boxer. Barnes persuades Wood Mountain to take part in a grueling fight with the gate receipts going toward paying for a Turtle Mountain delegation who travel to Washington, D.C., to fight the termination bill written by Senator Arthur W. Watkins.
Patrice is also driven to learn what happened to her sister Vera who disappeared in Minneapolis, leaving her baby with friends. Through the course of learning what happened to her sister, Patrice experiences life as a ‘waterjack’ in a seedy nightclub. By her own fierce vigilance she fights off the same forces that sent her sister into the arms of human traffickers.
Millie Cloud, a graduate sociology student, a secondary character, also plays an important role in the novel. Millie’s research of the Turtle Mountain people is key in the delegation’s presentation to Washington lawmakers. All but completely absorbed into white culture, Millie rediscovers her Chippewa roots and, like her fellow warriors, fights for the rights of her people.
Patrice joins the delegation to Washington, only to return to discover that Wood Mountain has found someone else to take her place – someone else very important to her.
Erdrich accomplishes many things in this novel. She weaves seemingly disparate strands into a tightly woven rope at the end. She also shows how common people can accomplish great things when they work together. And, perhaps even greater, she shows the resilience of the Chippewa people and their refusal to be daunted.
This is a wonderfully inspiring novel by a master storyteller who will draw you in and not let you go until the very end.

I especially grew to love Patrice in this story. Her strength, her kindness and devotion. But I so enjoyed Millie and her wacky adoration of geometric patterns. I loved Thomas and Wood Mountain. I found myself wishing I still had men like that who were a part of my life. I wish I had a friend like Roderick. I wish Mormons weren’t so mocked and misunderstood.
I found myself angry the Joseph Smith was blamed for such unChristian people as the Senator...that his “ordination” was spoken of as though it was an evidence of Mormon mistreatment of Native Americans when every 12 year old boy is ordained and the Church never taught that Native Americans should be eliminated, and the idea that they would become white if they were righteous was not doctrine, just some one’s interpretation of the Book of Mormon. So angry I forgot how to punctuate.
Of course, it was always, culturally, a “Christian “ thing to change Indians. So patriarchal and so wrong. Not really Christian at all. Christ never taught that accepting his law meant one person was better than another. I sort of wanted to tell that to my book group when we discussed this book, but to what point?
This book touched me in a way that brought my heart to aching. It made me miss my parents and all of my family. But it also brought me some hope, just not much. I’m so sad when I think of the wrongs committed against Native Americans, against so many people. Man’s inhumanity to man is so senseless. And that people feel justified in their cruelty is unbelievable. And down deep somewhere, I long for them to feel shamed by their actions. Well, maybe not that deep. And I hope that they are watching over us like the night watchman, taking note of our deeds, whether good or bad.
Top reviews from other countries

I stuck with it to the end, but didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as her previous work.

Thomas is a nightwatchman at the local jewel bearing plant. He is also the Chairman of the Advisory Committee of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. Thomas gets wind of some forthcoming legislation, where the dry and difficult text amounts to an attempt to terminate the tribe’s rights (previously granted in perpetuity by the US Govt) to maintain the lands on their reservation. Instead the Bill seeks to disperse the tribe to the cities and to forego the rights which their ancestors fought for.
Patrice (don’t call her Pixie) also works at the plant, along with her pals Valentine, Betty and Doris. Patrice’s sister Vera has already been lured to the city and has gone missing. Patrice makes it her mission to find her.
Wood Mountain is a boxer, trained by Barnes, the local maths teacher. Both have eyes for Patrice. Both are thoroughly good people and are willing to do anything to help the causes of Thomas and Patrice.
So we learn about a host of characters within the community. Anchored by Thomas and his impending trip to Washington and Patrice and her family issues. This is a book of warmth, community and facing up to a significant enemy. The prose is wonderful and remains understated throughout. I (sadly) knew little about the state land grabs of native Americans and I am therefore grateful to have both read and hugely enjoyed The Night Watchman.
With thanks to Little Brown (Corsair) and Netgalley for an ARC

It shows life among the Chippewa Native Americans in 1953 when a senator is attempting to break the conditions of the treaty apportioning their reservation to the Chippewa. There are great characters here, some based on relatives of the author. There's lots of the lore and superstitions used by the tribe as they gradually acquire education. This is a well-plotted and well-written novel. Without being in any way maudlin, this saga arouses great sympathy for these utterly disadvantaged people.

I love Erdrich's writing and have been a fan of her books since I read The Round House. The Night Watchman was a little bit long for my liking, but it is enlightening, entertaining and well worth a read.
Louise Erdrich is a worthy winner of the Pulitzer Prize and I can't wait to read her latest novel, The Sentence.
