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Book Reviews

Louise erdrich's disquieting new novel will keep you on your toes.

Maureen Corrigan

The Sentence: It's such an unassuming title (and one that sounds like it belongs to a writing manual); but, Louise Erdrich 's latest is a deceptively big novel, various in its storytelling styles; ambitious in its immediacy.

The Sentence is part of a vanguard of fall fiction — by writers as disparate as Jodi Picoult , Gary Shteyngart , and Michael Connelly — that tries to capture a splintering America during this long pandemic moment. For Erdrich, these strange times call for a ghost story that sometimes shifts into social realism: specifically, into an account of the first months of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd .

An absorbing and unquiet novel, The Sentence , like the era we're living through, keeps us readers on the alert for the next improbable turn of events looming ahead of us. Erdrich's story starts in a slapstick crime mode, reminiscent of the novels of Elmore Leonard . Our narrator, a wry and resourceful woman named Tookie, recalls the misdeed that, years earlier, landed her in federal prison.

Back then, Tookie drove a refrigerated grocery van and she was asked by a grieving friend to steal the corpse of a recently deceased lover away from another woman's house. Tookie pulled off the snatch, but didn't notice that packets of cocaine were taped under the corpse's armpits. Arrested, Tookie took the fall. She tells us that "the most important skill I'd gained in prison was how to read with murderous attention."

Mercifully released after 10 years, Tookie, who's Native American, lands a job at Birchbark Books in Minneapolis — the very same independent bookstore that Louise Erdrich owns in real life. Erdrich herself makes sporadic appearances here, but she's by no means the most jarring presence in the bookstore, as Tookie ominously tells us: "In November 2019, death took one of my most annoying customers. But she did not disappear."

Flora was a white woman, who patronized Birchbark, which specializes in Native books. Tookie calls her "a stalker — of all things Indigenous." At first Flora's spectral activities are confined to footsteps and book reshufflings. But, as the pandemic, manifests itself in late winter of 2020, Flora's behavior grows more sinister — she wants to take possession of Tookie, who shifts from pissed-off to petrified. There's also a suspicion that Flora's death may have been caused by the last sentence of the last book that she was reading.

Throughout her long career and most recently in her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Night Watchman , Erdrich has interwoven the workings of things seen and unseen into her writing. White appropriation and the attempted decimation of Native identity have also been Erdrich's abiding subjects. But these unprecedented times call forth unusual strategies from writers: In the second half of The Sentence, Erdrich layers on a style closer to creative nonfiction as Tookie witnesses the protests in Minneapolis following the killing of George Floyd. Here's Tookie describing her drive to work:

I passed burnt-out stores with walls like broken teeth. ... I passed a woman with a shopping cart full of children. . . . Pockets of peace, then full-out soldiers in battle gear. ... I passed a popcorn store that was open and I stopped to buy popcorn. The popcorn smell modified the smell of spent tear gas — sour, musky chalk. ... I got stopped by a cloud when I was nearly home. It was a cloud of emotion. I came to a halt and tried to breathe my way through the mist. It was cleared by the loud curfew alert on my phone."

Though I've never put Norman Mailer and Erdrich together before, sections like this one remind me of Mailer's 1968 masterpiece, The Armies of the Night , his so-called "nonfiction novel" chronicling an earlier time of fracture and unrest in America.

All is tumultuous in The Sentence — the spirits, the country, Erdrich's own style. One of the few constants this novel affirms is the power of books. Tookie recalls that everyone at Birchbark is delighted when bookstores are deemed an "essential" business during the pandemic, making books as important as "food, fuel, heat, garbage collection, snow shoveling, and booze." No arguments here. And I'd add The Sentence to the growing list of fiction that seems pretty "essential" for a deeper take on the times we're living through.

• Louise Erdrich

clock This article was published more than  2 years ago

‘The Sentence’ is among Louise Erdrich’s most magical novels

The coronavirus pandemic is still raging away and God knows we’ll be reading novels about it for years, but Louise Erdrich’s “ The Sentence ” may be the best one we ever get. Neither a grim rehashing of the lockdown nor an apocalyptic exaggeration of the virus, her book offers the kind of fresh reflection only time can facilitate, and yet it’s so current the ink feels wet.

Such is the mystery of Erdrich’s work, and “The Sentence” is among her most magical novels, switching tones with the felicity of a mockingbird. She notes that the Native American language of her ancestors “includes intricate forms of human relationships and infinite ways to joke,” and she fully explores that spectrum in these pages: A zany crime caper gives way to the horrors of police brutality; lives ruined flip suddenly into redemption; the deaths of half-a-million Americans play out while a grumpy ghost causes mischief. But the abiding presence here is love.

And books — so many books . This is a novel packed to its spine with other books. I was keeping track of each one mentioned until I discovered Erdrich’s appendix, which lists more than 150 beloved titles. Be prepared: “The Sentence” is that rare novel about the life-transforming effect of literature that arrives with its own syllabus.

With ‘The Night Watchman,’ Louise Erdrich rediscovers her genius

The narrator, Tookie, is a convicted body snatcher with a hard-won appreciation for the words used to build stories. She opens the novel by announcing, “While in prison, I received a dictionary.” She immediately looked up the word “sentence” because, she notes, “I had received an impossible sentence of sixty years from the lips of a judge who believed in an afterlife.”

Fortunately, that harsh punishment doesn’t carry her to the great beyond. In fact, after reading every book in the prison library “with murderous attention,” Tookie gets released in 2015, decades earlier than she’d feared.

Because she’d spent so long dreaming of a wider selection than the prison’s ample store of craft books, she decides to look first for a job in a bookstore. Only one employer responds to her résumé: “a modest little place” that specializes in Native American literature and is owned by a novelist named Louise.

10 books to read in November

Fans will recognize that entrepreneurial writer as the Pulitzer Prize-winner herself and her “modest little place” as Birchbark Books, which Erdrich owns in Minneapolis. This isn’t the first time Erdrich has written herself into her own fiction; her 2010 masterpiece “ Shadow Tag ” was inspired by the dissolution of her marriage to the writer Michael Dorris. But in “The Sentence,” Louise is only a side character, a benevolent, somewhat distracted owner who admits, “This is a dark time for little bookstores and we probably won’t make it,” and then offers Tookie a job.

Those odds are fine with Tookie, whose status as an ex-con gives her few options. “I am an ugly woman,” she tells us, adding, “nor am I beautiful on the inside.” But she knows her strengths. “My go-to outfit was black jeans, high-top black Stompers, black football jersey, nose ring, eyebrow cuff, tight black bandanna headband to keep my hair in place,” she says. “Who would dare not buy a book from me?”

There’s no denying Tookie’s gruff charm or her swelling pride when she says, “I resisted the temptation to pilfer the till and I resisted the temptation to steal credit card info.” This whirlwind of an opening chapter even sees Tookie find love and marriage with a most unlikely person. “Knowing what I know of my tribe’s history, remembering what I can bear to remember of my own,” she says, “I can only call the life I live now a life of heaven.”

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The great arc of these first 30 pages — zany body-snatching! harrowing prison ordeal! opposites-attract rom-com! — could have provided all the material needed for a whole novel, but Erdrich has something else in mind for “The Sentence”: This is a ghost story — though not like any I’ve read before. The novel’s ectoplasm hovers between the realms of historical horror and cultural comedy.

In late 2019, Tookie’s most annoying customer, Flora, dies. But five days later, Flora is back in the store, haunt-browsing. Tookie can hear her shuffling about, knocking books off the shelves. “It is disturbing enough when a regular customer dies,” Tookie says, “but Flora’s stubborn refusal to vanish began to irk me.”

When she was alive, Flora was irritating in a most peculiar way: She was wholly devoted to Native American causes — fostering Native American teenagers, raising money for a Native American women’s shelter, attending every powwow and protest. But there was always something creepy and grasping about Flora’s Nativephilia , her desperation to convince people of her Indigenous heritage. “She was a very persistent wannabe,” Tookie says. Her desire to be Native American eventually became an “earnest, unaccountable, persistent, self-obliterating delusion.”

After her cremation, nothing changes. “In death as in life,” Tookie sighs, “she couldn’t take a hint.”

Louise Erdrich’s ‘LaRose’: A gun accident sets off a masterly tale of grief and love

Getting Flora to rest in peace will be harder than any sale Tookie has ever made, and that exorcism soon runs into other old spirits haunting this novel, along with new specters rising up. The coronavirus pandemic threatens to snuff out the economy, starting with retail shops. And the murder of George Floyd unleashes a wave of grief and rage. “Our country crept along beneath a pall of sorrow,” Tookie says. “There was a continual hum of panic.”

When people are dying, mourning and isolating, what kind of refuge can a little bookstore be?

A surprisingly effective one. “It was more than a place,” Tookie says, “it was a nexus, a mission, a work of art, a calling, a sacred craziness, a slice of eccentricity, a collection of good people who shifted and rearranged but cared deeply about the same one thing — books.” 

That could be a sentimental theme — there are shelves of novels celebrating bookstores — but Erdrich complicates that warm feeling. Moving at its own peculiar rhythm with a scope that feels somehow both cloistered and expansive, “The Sentence” captures a traumatic year in the history of a nation struggling to appreciate its own diversity.

Ron Charles writes about books for The Washington Post and hosts TotallyHipVideoBookReview.com .

The Sentence

By Louise Erdrich

Harper. 386 pp. $28.99

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22 Of The Very Best First Lines Of Books

Nikki VanRy

Nikki VanRy is a proud resident of Arizona, where she gets to indulge her love of tacos, desert storms, and tank tops. She also writes for the Tucson Festival of Books, loves anything sci-fi/fantasy/historical, drinks too much chai, and will spend all day in bed reading thankyouverymuch. Follow her on Instagram @nikki.vanry .

View All posts by Nikki VanRy

The first line of a book is a liminal space: the curtains drawing upwards, the author leading you by the hand forward into a story (but also another world). A first line is a choice. Do you want to go further? Are the following lines and pages and chapters worth your time? When an author gets it right, though, the best first lines of books are not a choice at all, but a capturing.

These are some of our favorite first lines of books, with explanations why they rank among the very best.

“124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children.”

From Beloved by Toni Morrison

“I read this book for the first time in my high school senior spring, and it took a lot to get my attention, but this one did. It sets the readers expectations of a baby ghost and that it preys on women and children. Nothing like a supernatural occurrence to rally the senses!”

—Mary Kay McBrayer

“He began to die when he was twenty-one, but tuberculosis is slow and sly and subtle.”

From Doc by Mary Doria Russell

“From the beginning, Russell promises us a tragic tale, but I can’t help falling directly into her story with the alliteration and almost hypnotic voice.”

—Nikki VanRy

“I sent one boy to the gas chamber at Huntsville.”

From No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

“Noir novels are famous for their slow burn, but this one immediately exposes Ed Tom Bell’s existential crisis: he does the work of a good man, but around the bad men, and he won’t put his soul at hazard, though he already has.”

“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents, grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.”

From Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

“I can remember reading this book for the first time when I was in elementary school, and that first scene drew me in. I read it and reread this book over and over in elementary and middle school, and that first line was like an old friend whenever I saw it. To this day, the line makes me smile when I think of it. For me, it’s iconic.”

—Jaime Herndon

“I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.”

From Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

“It drew me into the story immediately and establishes the theme of identity. Cal mythologizes himself and obsesses over his personal and family history. So, this dramatic but matter-of-fact beginning is a great introduction to his voice.”

—Grace Lapointe

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”

From The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

“It’s a classic for a reason! I think that this line is a great example of world-building. It’s the first literary introduction to what hobbits are, and it paints a vivid depiction of them: they value comfort, coziness, and plenty of things to eat. Even if you live under a rock (…or in a hobbit-hole) and you’ve never heard of Middle-earth before, you can’t help but already have a fondness for them based on these few lines.”

—Andy Winder

“How should a person be? For years and years I asked it of everyone I met. I was always watching to see what they were going to do in any situation, so I could do it too. I was always listening to their answers, so if I liked them, I could make them my answers too. I noticed the way people dressed, the way they treated their lovers—in everyone, there was something to envy. You can admire anyone for being themselves.”

From How Should A Person Be? by Sheila Heti

“It’s just perfect?”

—Casey Stepaniuk

“They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they take their time.”

From Paradise by Toni Morrison

“This first line is arresting and shocking. Morrison has said that readers are often obsessed with figuring out who the white girl is—some people just decide they know. In struggling to find the right answer, those readers often have to ask themselves why it would matter.”

—Leah Rachel von Essen

“I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.”

From I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

“Short, evocative and it gets my brain swirling right off the bat! Who is this, and why are they writing while sitting in a kitchen sink?”

—Rachel Rosenberg

“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.”

From Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling

“I had it choose it. Eight-year-old Kate was absolutely captivated from this sentence onward and I can still hear Jim Dale’s voice inflection from the audiobooks in my memory.”

“My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist.”

From Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones

“A simple and powerful statement. It dares you not to need to read on.”

—Jamie Canavés

“History has failed us, but no matter.”

From Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

“I was smitten from this first line. In seven words, Lee sets up Pachinko ’s entire narrative, which features a group of people all too often forgotten from history. But they are still resilient. They are survivors.”

—Kendra Winchester

“We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.”

From The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

“ The Handmaid’s Tale was my assigned summer reading before my senior year of high school. I had never heard of it and didn’t look up anything about it, so I had zero context for what I was about to read. From the first line, and through the first chapter, I was already annotating the book with so many questions and notes, completely immersed in a world that was unknown, yet felt so familiar. It was the first time I’d ever been a truly active reader and fully engaging in a book instead of just going along for the ride.”

—Patricia Thang

“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.”

From Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

“I could read this line a hundred times and always interpret it a little differently. It immediately throws the reader into this kind of nostalgia, this distant wanting, this possibility that anything could happen. The ship metaphor is powerful. It could mean something about perspective and distance, or something about travel and opportunity and the great unknown of the sea. This line, much like the book, is unforgettable.”

—Susie Dumond

“All this happened, more or less.”

From Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

“I’ve never seen anyone else do what Vonnegut does with a simple sentence. He uses words like war rations: dear, precious, and to be savored. Here, he establishes straight away the unreliability of the narrator (himself) and prepares us for a story that will be a considerable amount to swallow—because why else would he warn us that most everything here happened? Six perfectly chosen words.”

—Nicole Hill

“Captain Ahab was neither my first husband, nor my last.”

From Ahab’s Wife by Sena Jeter

“I love this because it gives the reader so much and so little at the same time.”

—Gretchen Lida

“The Stark River flowed around the oxbow at Murrayville the way blood flowed through Margo Crane’s heart.”

From Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell

“I love how this sentence gives you two very strong images and tells you so much about our heroine. The entire opening paragraph of this book is a winner, but this sentence is bold and demands your attention.”

—Tirzah Price

“The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.”

From The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

“It hooked me. What an opener. What a delicious mystery. My imagination went wild, and I could not wait to find out what was inside those circus gates.”

—Melissa Baron

“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

From One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

“I love how perfectly this sentence sets up the entire book—the sentence, like the book, is epic in scope. It contains equal parts wonder and horror. There are so many layers of story in that one sentence. It’s also exquisitely beautiful. Considering that the book is translated from Spanish, it always astounds me how lush and gorgeous the music of the prose is in that sentence. It’s perfect.”

—Laura Sackton

“Before my wife turned vegetarian, I’d always thought of her as completely unremarkable in every way.”

From The Vegetarian by Han Kang, translated from Korean by Deborah Smith

“Right off the bat, you know who this narrator (one of many) is: a very unlikeable character. And oh my, do I find unlikeable characters intriguing. Plus, this line brings up so many delicious questions for me. Who is this wife? Why did she turn vegetarian? What does vegetarianism have to do with making her unremarkable to this narrator? What does he consider unremarkable? I could go on and on…”

—Stacey Megally

“I spent much of my childhood listening to the sound of striving”.

From Becoming by Michelle Obama

—Cathleen Perez Brenycz

“It was a dark and stormy night.”

From A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

“As I revisited this childhood classic 20 years later, the mysterious opening line rang in my head even before I started reading. It sets the tone for not only this classic book, but for all the other memorable books of its genre: The Giver , The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler… now if I could just figure out how to pronounce the author’s last name.”

—Shireen Hakim

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How a social media feud led to a couple's murder

"20/20" explores the 2012 killings of Billy Payne and Billie Jean Hayworth.

When police found Billy Payne and his fiancée Billie Jean Hayworth shot execution-style in a rural Tennessee home with their 7-month-old son Tyler alive in Hayworth's arms in 2012, it sparked an investigation that would lead them to discover a complex murder concocted by a woman who was in the middle of a social media feud.

Jenelle Potter has been serving two concurrent life sentences for the murders after she was convicted in 2015. Prosecutors contend that Potter deceived her parents and her boyfriend into thinking that the couple threatened her before her father, Marvin "Buddy" Potter, committed the slayings.

Even all these years later, investigators said they still struggle with the horrors of the incident.

"The little boy...just thinking about him laying there just breaks my heart," Mountain City Police Department Assistant Chief, Joe Woodard, who helped investigate the case, told "20/20."

"20/20" will explore the case in an episode airing April 5 at 9 p.m. ET and streaming on Hulu the next day with archival interviews of Potter and her mother before their prison sentences, key investigators and friends of the victims.

MORE: How a Social Media Feud Led to the Murder of a Young Tennessee Couple

The show will also feature interrogation tapes and courtroom footage of the case and the latest updates.

Potter told "20/20" in 2015 that she had trouble adjusting and didn't make many friends when her family moved to Mountain City, Tennessee, in 2005.

"I didn't grow up here," Potter, now 42, told "20/20" in 2015. "People here do not like outsiders."

She befriended pharmacy clerk Tracy Greenwell and the two started hanging out, along with Greenwell's brother, Billy Payne. Potter also had a relationship with Greenwell's cousin, Jamie Curd, behind the back of her strict parents.

Trouble started to brew when Potter claimed she was getting harassing messages on her Facebook page and accused Hayworth of being behind them.

Eventually, Potter, Hayworth and Payne stopped being friends on Facebook.

A few days after the couple was found dead, investigators questioned Marvin, Jenelle and Barbara in their home.

"We knew that they had trouble with [Hayworth and Payne]," Woodard told "20/20."

During the interview, Jenelle appeared to be hiding her romantic relationship with Curd from her parents. He was later was later brought in for questioning by police.

After being told he failed a polygraph test, Curd admitted that he and Janelle's dad, Marvin, went to Payne and Hayworth's home where he says Marvin killed them.

"I didn't truly believe that Buddy Potter was capable of doing this," Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Scott Lott said in 2015. "Because Buddy did have some health issues."

MORE: Facebook 'Defriending' Led to Double Murder, Say Police

With this new information, police brought Marvin in for questioning.

While being questioned by detectives, Marvin said, "I've had my life threatened. My wife has been threatened. They've threatened to take Jenelle, cut her head off."

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Lott then arranged for Marvin to call his wife Barbara.

On the call, Marvin is heard telling his wife: "Before you find out from somebody else, I want you to know, I was involved in it. I did it...At least some of it." "That's as close to a confession as we got from him," said Lott in 2015.

While Marvin was being questioned, police executed a search warrant on the Potter house.

Assistant Chief Woodard said investigators found an "arsenal" of weapons around the home. They also discovered printed photos of the victim and her friends in the living room.

Authorities seized 51 items from the house, including their family computer. When they impounded Marvin's truck, they found bags of shredded documents.

An agent meticulously reconstructed more than 100 pages of what appeared to be thousands of emails sent to the Potter family.

"After combing through them, it appeared there was some type of conspiracy here. They kept referring to a guy Chris that's supposedly a CIA operative or something," Lott said in 2015.

The CIA agent "Chris" had been corresponding with Barbara and warning her about threats to her daughter's life.

MORE: Video Why a Social Media Feud Led to a Young Couple's Murder

On the Potters' computer, police analysis found that emails sent from CIA agent Chris all came from the same IP address at the home where the Potters lived. Prosecutors contended Jenelle was pretending to be Chris and used the false identity to fool her parents and to goad Marvin Potter into the killing. They also say the threats of rape and murder against Jenelle were false and fabricated by her.

"Social media allowed Jenelle Potter to be someone that she wasn't," Brooks said. "She could assume a different identity and be as hateful as she wanted to be."

In August 2013, authorities arrested Jenelle and Barbara for the murders of Payne and Hayworth.

A few months later, in October 2013, Marvin was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and was sentenced to two life sentences. Curd agreed to a plea deal of two concurrent sentences of 25 years in prison for facilitation of first degree murder and testified against Jenelle and Barbara. He has been released on parole.

In May 2015 Jenelle and Barbara were convicted after a seven-day trial and sentenced to life in prison two months later.

In an interview with "20/20" after the conviction, Jenelle and Barbara denied that they were involved in the murders of Payne and Hayworth.

"I didn't hate [Hayworth and Payne]. I just disliked them. I wanted [them] to quit. I wanted the harassment to stop," Jenelle Potter said.

Both Jenelle and Marvin lost appeals on their cases and are serving their sentences.

In 2021, Barbara's murder conviction was overturned because her lawyer, who also represented Marvin, had a conflict of interest. Instead of being retried she pled guilty to the lesser charge of facilitation of murder. She is now eligible for parole in 2028.

Friends and family of the victims say the one thing that remains etched in their minds is baby Tyler and how he has to live the rest of his entire life without his mom and dad.

"He was her world," Thomas said of Hayworth. "Just this glow she had about her when he came into the world was just unbelievable."

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The Sentence by Louise Erdrich review – saved by books

A Native American rebuilds her life after a prison sentence in this powerfully topical novel from the Pulitzer winner

A s Louise Erdrich’s new novel begins, her heroine, Tookie, has been sentenced to 60 years in prison for an offence both horrible and ridiculous. It’s 2005, and though Tookie is in her 30s, “I still clung to a teenager’s pursuits and mental habits” – drinking and drugging as though she is still an impulsive young adult. Her friend Danae’s lover Budgie has died in the arms of his ex, Mara; Danae persuades Tookie to steal a delivery truck in order to snatch Budgie’s body back. The judge who sends her away to a Minnesota jail is shocked by her crime; Tookie, however, is not surprised by his harshness. “I was on the wrong side of the statistics. Native Americans are the most oversentenced people currently imprisoned,” she says.

But while in prison, books are her salvation. Even when she is not permitted to have them, she calls up a library in her head: “everything from the Redwall books to Huck Finn to Lilith’s Brood”. So when she is unexpectedly released in 2015 – her sentence commuted thanks to the tireless efforts of her tribe’s defence lawyer – it is perhaps unsurprising that she finds a job in a Minneapolis bookshop. And here this powerful, endearing novel takes a swerve from its Orange Is the New Black -style opening. It is not Tookie’s term in the savage American carceral system that is the true focus of the book, but her life after her release – a life as ordinary and extraordinary as any, delineated with the care and political acumen that have always distinguished Erdrich’s work, and which won her the Pulitzer prize for her last novel, The Night Watchman.

That book was inspired by the life of her own grandfather, tribal chairman of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, who in the 1950s campaigned tirelessly against the US government’s policy of “termination”, through which Native American tribes would be moved off their land, and the land sold. Over the course of her long and distinguished writing career, beginning with the acclaimed Love Medicine in 1984, Erdrich has charted Indigenous lives in the US in a manner that recalls William Faulkner ’s Yoknapatawpha County: the creation of a fictional universe centred in lived reality and experience. Her books always run right up against the politics of the present, and The Sentence has an almost shocking immediacy, set as it is against the background of the Covid-19 pandemic and the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis , where Erdrich lives.

And Erdrich not only lives there, but also owns a bookstore very similar to the shop in The Sentence. Birchbark Books describes itself as “a locus for Indigirati – literate Indigenous people who have survived over half a millennium on this continent”. And so it is with its fictional counterpart. Tookie looks over shelves filled with Indigenous history, fiction, memoir and poetry and “realised we are more brilliant than I knew”. One of their customers is Flora, a white woman who claims Native heritage. Tookie calls her “a very persistent wannabe”: a stalker of all things Indigenous. But when Flora dies suddenly, on 2 November, All Souls’ Day, “when the fabric between the worlds is thin as tissue and easily torn”, her ghost refuses to leave the bookshop. Her spirit haunts Tookie and her co-workers – and the mystery of her spirit presence is one of the motors that drives the book, as Tookie seeks to discover what keeps her drifting among the shelves.

It’s not the only one. The joy of Erdrich’s novels lies in the way her characters live so richly, and are as present to the reader as our own friends and relatives are. Having had her life unexpectedly returned to her, Tookie savours the quotidian: the comforting presence of her husband, Pollux; her prickly relationship with her stepdaughter, Hetta. But as the novel’s chronology moves forward, catastrophe intrudes into Tookie’s happy if haunted life. An airborne virus closes the world down, though it makes the shop busier than ever, thank goodness. Erdrich captures the fear and the queasy pleasure of a suddenly deserted metropolis and a suddenly closed-down life. Tookie is content during the early months of the pandemic: safe.

But Floyd’s death blasts apart any sense of safety, and in a sense takes the reader back to the novel’s beginning: to a legal system built on injustice and oppression, on the often brutal repression of Black and brown people. If the second half of the novel feels more chaotic than the first, why wouldn’t it? Erdrich is displaying the chaos of the moment as it occurs, and does so with astonishing grace. “I passed people going about their normal business, planting their gardens, flower beds, watering their lawns. I passed a popcorn store that was open and I stopped to buy popcorn. The popcorn smell modified the smell of old tear gas – sour, musky chalk.” The novel resolves in small moments of personal redemption and familial love, allowing for hope amid tragedy.

Tookie’s courage and passion carry us; she is, throughout, a stalwart companion, facing hardship and aware of her own good fortune. “I live the way a person does who has ceased to dread each day’s ration of time,” she says – a motto to go by, surely, if we can.

The Sentence is published by Corsair (£20). To support The Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply.

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14 Best English Grammar Books to Help You Master the Rules Inside and Out [Updated for 2024]

English grammar books are treasure troves of information on punctuation, capitalization, sentence structure , word usage and so much more.

You’ll find plenty that claim to be the “best English grammar book” online, but only a handful actually live up to that promise.

But don’t worry. Whether you’re aiming to pass an English proficiency exam, or you just want to be better understood by your English-speaking friends, we’ve got you covered with these 14 English grammar books to hone your writing and speaking skills to perfection. 

1. Best Overall: The “Grammar in Use” Series

2. most comprehensive reference: “the cambridge grammar of the english language”, 3. best for learning grammar basics: “a student’s introduction to english grammar”, 4. most straightforward english grammar book: “schaum’s outline of english grammar”.

• 5. Best for Simple Yet In-depth Explanations: “The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation” 
• 6. Best Supplementary Material for Intermediate and Advanced ESL Students: “ESL Grammar: Intermediate & Advanced” 

7. Best for Structured Grammar Practice: “Focus on Grammar”

• 8. Best for Real-life Grammar: “Practical English Usage” 
• 9. Best for Spoken Grammar: “Cambridge Grammar of English” 
• 10. Best Grammar Dictionary: “The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar” 
• 11. Best for Learning Punctuation: “The Best Punctuation Book, Period” 

12. Most Fun Grammar Book: “Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing”

13. best for aspiring writers: “the elements of style”, 14. best for advanced learners: “the linguistic structure of modern english”, how to study with english grammar books, and one more thing....

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Summary: All of the “Grammar in Use” books are able to balance being a reference material and workbook rolled into one.

Search online for the best English grammar book, and there’s a good chance you’ll find someone recommending an entry from the “Grammar in Use” series by Raymond Murphy.

Every book from the series (including the ones for intermediate and advanced students) covers 100 units. Each unit focuses on a specific grammar topic and comes with exercises. Once you’re done with the exercises, you can check them against the answer keys at the back of the book. This makes it easy to use as a self-study guide and as a supplement to your classroom studies.

If you’re at the A1-B1 level and you want more material to work with, you can also purchase Murphy’s “Essential Grammar” books here and here .

The “Grammar in Use” books aren’t the most comprehensive English grammar books (that would be our next entry). But if you’re looking for materials that you can study on your own, use as a supplement to your classroom studies and/or build a strong foundation in the English language, there aren’t a lot of books that can beat Murphy’s works.

Summary: If you want to really get into the nitty-gritty of the English language, you’ll benefit the most from this comprehensive (though not necessarily ESL-friendly) book.

At a hefty 1,800+ pages, “The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language” is a comprehensive grammar reference book that you should always keep within your reach. It covers all the key grammar topics in detail, and is great for understanding the patterns and structures of the English language.

However, this book doesn’t have any exercises, so it works best as a reference material. For instance, if you get stuck on another grammar resource or need a better explanation, you can look up the topic in this book.

Note that it’s not specifically targeted at students learning English as a second language. As such, you may want to keep a dictionary on hand as you comb through this book.

Summary: “A Student’s Introduction to English Grammar” is a more condensed version of “The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language” aimed at undergraduate-level students.

If “The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language” feels a bit too advanced for you at the moment, but you still want something that’s just as comprehensive yet more accessible, you can get the cheaper and thinner “A Student’s Introduction to English Grammar.”

While it’s not for complete beginners to English, it does provide a solid foundation for grammar. You may find it especially useful if you’re a college or university student who’s not majoring in English, but are still interested in the technical aspects of the language.

Unlike “The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language,” this one has plenty of exercises, as well as links to online resources you can check out to supplement your studies.

Summary: “Schaum’s Outline of English Grammar” contains bare-bones (simple and straightforward) discussions of the most essential English grammar concepts, accompanied by several examples and exercises.  

If you like to memorize rules and terminology, “Schaum’s Outline of English Grammar” is for you. The material is presented in a straightforward way with definitions, explanations and practice exercises.

There are no illustrations or out-of-the-box activities to help you learn the grammar concepts, however. So, if you’re looking for a textbook with a less traditional approach to teaching concepts, this might not be for you.

With that said, “Schaum’s Outline of English Grammar” can take any dedicated student from intermediate to advanced, provided you stick to the book’s structured learning program. It even works well for aspiring writers!

5. Best for Simple Yet In-depth Explanations: “The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation”  

Summary: “The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation” is a concise grammar book that goes into a bit more detail than similar reference materials. 

“The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation” breaks down the rules of English grammar with short explanations. It’s like a slightly more in-depth version of “Schaum’s Outline of English Grammar.”

The book has plenty of real-world examples, emphasizing common questions like the difference between “your” and “you’re.” There are quizzes for every chapter at the end of the book. Aside from grammar, it also covers punctuation and capitalization rules, which can seem pretty confusing in English.

You can check out their website to get a feel for the book’s style, or try their free grammar quizzes .

6. Best Supplementary Material for Intermediate and Advanced ESL Students: “ESL Grammar: Intermediate & Advanced”  

Summary: This book, which is aimed at ESL learners, explains intermediate and advanced English concepts in a simple and straightforward way, complete with exercises to reinforce what you’ve learned.

Tired of learning English from books that don’t understand the unique challenges ESL learners face? Then this book might be for you. It’s written by a bilingual author who knows what it’s like to learn a second language and explains the content in a way that’s perfect for ESL students.

The book is filled with test-taking strategies to help students prepare for the TOEFL exam . It also covers the basics of topics like articles, prepositions and verb structures.

The book even comes with its own glossary (a simplified dictionary that only contains words/phrases and their meanings). This way, you don’t have to worry about not having a dictionary every time you use this book to study.

Since it’s aimed at ESL students, however, some of the topics may not be as thoroughly explained as you might like. In that case, you may want to refer to other resources instead.

“Focus on Grammar” is a series of grammar books broken up into the following proficiency levels, from beginner to advanced:

The “Focus on Grammar” workbooks are designed for those who benefit from structure and organization. If you’re someone who prefers explanations over context and wants to know the ins and outs of each grammatical rule covered, this is the perfect book is for you.

The books are designed for classroom use as well as self-study, so you can benefit from this versatile workbook that covers definitions, forms and practical grammar knowledge.

Also, there’s a good chance your ESL teacher is using a “Focus on Grammar” book. If that’s the case, don’t hesitate to ask them for tips on how to use this one when you’re studying!

8. Best for Real-life Grammar: “Practical English Usage”  

Summary: True to its name, “Practical English Usage” emphasizes the use of English grammar in practical, authentic contexts.

“Practical English Usage” is a well-known grammar book that’s already on its fourth edition. Geared toward intermediate and advanced learners, it covers more than 600 grammar points that are often tricky, such as the difference between “bring” and “take” and how to use different articles.

Most notably, it tackles the problem of usage. For example, you might know how to form the present perfect tense , but when exactly do you use it? 

Beyond this, the second part of the book talks about common issues with vocabulary. You’ll also find extra information on topics like polite or offensive language and how to write business emails in English . 

9. Best for Spoken Grammar: “Cambridge Grammar of English”  

Summary: Aside from covering English grammar points in detail, the “Cambridge Grammar of English” also has a CD packed with audio recordings of the lessons.

At almost 1,000 pages, “Cambridge Grammar of English” is one of the thickest grammar books on this list. Even though it dives deep into major English grammar topics, it’s pretty user-friendly. It’s written in clear language, and each grammar concept comes with lots of example sentences that you’ll actually hear in everyday life.

It also comes with a CD-ROM, which makes it much easier and faster to find what you’re looking for in the book. You can also listen to every example being read aloud, too!

10. Best Grammar Dictionary: “The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar”  

Summary: If you’re simply looking for definitions of English grammar terms and nothing else, there are few better resources than “The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar.”

Have you ever wondered what terms like “appositive” or “gerund” meant? Chances are, you’ll find the answer within the pages of “The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar.” It’s a grammar reference book that focuses on defining grammar terms instead of explaining grammar rules.

This dictionary has more than 1,600 entries from A to Z. Some entries have examples you’ll regularly encounter in real-world English, making this a bit more practical than your usual garden-variety (ordinary) dictionary.

11. Best for Learning Punctuation: “The Best Punctuation Book, Period”  

Summary: If punctuation is your Achilles’ heel (weakest point), keep this aptly-named book handy.

Grammar isn’t just about the words—you also need to account for punctuation! While some books might only have a small chapter (or section) on punctuation, “The Best Punctuation Book, Period” is a helpful reference that discusses each type of punctuation in the English language , including Oxford commas and apostrophes.

Although it’s not a full grammar reference book, it’s an excellent resource for learning punctuation rules. You’ll learn exactly how to use each punctuation mark in different situations.  

If you’re looking for a funnier (albeit less beginner-friendly) alternative, there’s also “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” by Lynne Truss. This one is peppered with authentic examples, complete with commentaries from the author that will make you laugh out loud.

Summary: “Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing” is perfect for you if you find most grammar books too dry and boring to get through.

Looking for a grammar book that’s fun and witty rather than overly academic? “Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing” might not have as much information as other reference books, but it’s written in a friendlier and more conversational style.

The author is also the owner of the award-winning “Grammar Girl” podcast , which teaches English grammar to help you improve your writing skills. It was so popular that it’s been downloaded over 20 million times to date, and is a five-time winner of the Best Education Podcast in the Podcast Awards.

Summary: “The Elements of Style” by Strunk and White is a classic book that mostly focuses on how to write better in American English, but also has some great grammar pointers.

Are you dreaming of becoming a writer in the English language? Then you should definitely have this book on your to-read list. In fact, many native English writers have it!

While it’s more geared toward writers than learners of English grammar, there are some valuable grammar tips at the beginning of the book. As you progress, you’ll also come across pointers that can help improve your writing in general, such as “Avoid fancy words” and “Use orthodox (standard) spelling.”

Because of its intended readership, however, “The Elements of Style” is best suited for those who are already in the advanced stages of learning English.

Summary: “The Linguistic Structure of Modern English” is one of the best (if not the best) resources for advanced learners interested in the technicalities of the English language.

Speaking of advanced learners, you can’t get any more high-level than this one. If you thought “The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language” was detailed, wait until you open the pages of “The Linguistic Structure of Modern English.”

The book is aimed at linguists, or people who study languages. As such, you should expect a lot of terminology and in-depth analysis of specific grammatical concepts like syntax, phonology, etc.

I definitely wouldn’t recommend this one to beginners or even intermediate learners. But if you have a considerable amount of intellectual curiosity and are relatively comfortable with your command of the English language, reading this book might prove to be a treat.

Regardless of which English grammar book you pick, here’s how you can make the most of them.

• Find an engaging English grammar book that suits your learning style . Just because mastering grammar takes work doesn’t mean it has to be boring. Some students prefer books filled with creative ways to approach grammar, while others enjoy reading grammar rules and then solving problems.
• Check if the book you’re buying is the latest edition. Places like Amazon will typically display the newest editions below the description of the product you’re currently looking at, so keep an eye out for those!
• Supplement your books with other resources that show how the grammar is used in context. One example is the language learning program FluentU , which has hundreds of native English videos.
• If you’re not sure about a grammar rule, look it up. Sometimes, you might feel unsure about how to write something, like where to put an apostrophe or whether to capitalize a certain word. This is where grammar books can come in handy! Seeing the written rule and then applying it can help you remember it better.
• Use the index. Most grammar books have an index. An index is the part at the end of a book which alphabetically lists every major topic mentioned in the book, as well as which page to find it on. If you’re wondering about the Oxford comma, for example, you can turn to the back of the book and look for “comma” or “Oxford comma.” The numbers in the index show you which pages have the information you need.
• Read the theory first. Don’t even try to do any exercises unless you’re sure you have the grammar rule down pat. That way, when you finally get around to the exercises, you’re less likely to be stuck.
• Try to form sentences using the examples given in the book. Most examples in these books use common English vocabulary and phrases. So, try to memorize their formats and apply them to everyday conversations . For example, if you’re studying how to ask for (or give) directions in English , and the example sentence is “Can you tell me where the toilet is?,” you can replace “toilet” with “bank,” “school,” etc.

Remember that learning English is a process that takes time and dedication. These are just a few of the resources that will help you incorporate grammar into your studies and increase your overall fluency.

Use these books well, and you’ll be on your way to becoming an English grammar wizard!

If you like learning English through movies and online media, you should also check out FluentU. FluentU lets you learn English from popular talk shows, catchy music videos and funny commercials , as you can see here:

If you want to watch it, the FluentU app has probably got it.

The FluentU app and website makes it really easy to watch English videos. There are captions that are interactive. That means you can tap on any word to see an image, definition, and useful examples.

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The Sentence Shows the Downside of Urgency

A casual consumer of U.S. popular culture could assume Native Americans were extinct. Save some recent wins, like the Hulu series Reservation Dogs , Indigenous people have more often appeared in the American imaginary as relics of a conveniently distant past. In horror movies, the trope of the Indian burial ground is deployed as a threat to the fantasy of white suburban innocence. In the 1960s, countercultural movements adopted Native American dress and customs like peyote as markers of pre-industrial, pre-urbane simplicity. This remove is by design. As the essayist Richard Rodriguez put it in Days of Obligation , “Indians must be ghosts,” for “Indians represented permanence and continuity to Americans who were determined to call this country new.” It’s not uncommon for Americans to claim Indigenous ancestry, often with no more evidence than a great-great-grandparent with “high cheekbones” — an epidemic of self-identification that some Indigenous scholars have called “ Cherokee syndrome .” Time and distance are key here: They allow for the distinction between native and settler to be collapsed, while preserving as much racial purity as possible.

This society-wide denial that indigeneity is an active living thing is what animates my anxiety as I read Louise Erdrich’s novel  The Sentence , the setting of which is a Native American bookstore in a Minneapolis reeling from the pandemic and the murder of local resident George Floyd. You could read this immediacy as an act of defiance. So am I out of line for finding the book too current, for wishing it had put some distance between itself and the events of the last year?

The Sentence begins in pre-pandemic days, with the story of a Chippewa bookseller named Tookie who is being haunted by the ghost of a recently deceased customer: Flora, a white woman whom Tookie calls a “wannabee,” and who toted around a black-and-white photograph of an allegedly Native American ancestor for so long that she lost herself in an “earnest, unaccountable, persistent, self-obliterating delusion.” This is a type that Erdrich briefly and incisively skewered in her 2020 masterpiece The Night Watchman , and the prospect that we would get her fleshed-out take on the white psychodrama of racial forgery — couched within a ghost story, and just in time for spooky season — was too exciting to be believed. The first half of the novel is signature Erdrich and then some: righteously funny, magically eclectic, and refreshing in its moral clarity. But then 2020 happened, swelling up the book’s back half with scenes inspired by the pandemic, from its most mundane, panic-shopping details to its twin inflection point: the Black Lives Matter protests of last summer. Erdrich’s treatment of these moments reads as undigested. It reveals an author who believed — as many wanted to — that some seismic shift in race relations could not help but be underway.

The word “urgent” is a favorite of book blurbers and reviewers. The Sentence has me rethinking its value. Along with Our Country Friends by Gary Shteyngart and Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney, Erdrich’s new novel marks one of the first major works of contemporary fiction to use the pandemic and its satellite catastrophes as a setting. Shteyngart, like Boccaccio before him, uses pestilence as story frame straight away, whereas Erdrich lets us watch as it infects every cell of her pre-established narrative, with mixed results. Her book proposes that it’s time to consider how the events of the past year and a half will haunt us, but this crisis is not yet a ghost. It’s not even on its last legs.

Like any story begging for an option, The Sentence opens with a dead body. Our narrator, Tookie, has served ten years in prison for moving the corpse of her friend’s lover, a man we never meet alive named Budgie. There are extenuating circumstances involving a fruit truck, rainbow duct tape, and crack, but what ultimately incenses the judge is Tookie’s seeming disregard for the body itself. He doles out a sentence of 60 years. This seems extreme, but Tookie explains to the reader, “Native American are the most over-sentenced people currently imprisoned.” (Given the scant attention that Native Americans get in most conversations about mass incarceration, a little didactic prose can be forgiven.) In prison, Tookie is haunted by Budgie’s ghost; she hears him “hissing through his rotten teeth.” She finds refuge — from her sentence, from Budgie’s teeth, and maybe also from her own guilt — in the prison library, where she becomes a bibliophile. “The most important skill I gained in prison,” she jokes, “was how to read with murderous attention.”

This serves her well on the outside. After her sentence is commuted, she looks for work at Birchbark Books, a fictionalized version of Erdrich’s own real-life bookstore in Minneapolis, which specializes in books by and about Indigenous people. During her job interview with none other than author and proprietor Louise, Tookie, dressed in all black with a bandana and a nose ring, asks: “Who would dare not buy a book from me?” She gets the gig. The bookstore setting is intriguing. Although Erdrich sometimes falls into saccharine narratives about people who love to read, she also gets to make some well-placed jokes about autofiction and give us a backdoor peek at herself, in critic mode. For instance, on Ferrante , Tookie says: “Besides the repetitive language, my problem with (my now beloved) Elena Ferrante was her use of the winking cliff-hanger.”

Now married to her longtime crush, Pollux — the same tribal officer who arrested her — and gainfully employed, Tookie cannot believe her luck. Enter the ghost. Tookie is not entirely surprised to see Flora again. “She would haunt the store,” she thinks to herself. Or, as her co-worker puts it: “I shouldn’t be surprised that she won’t leave us alone even now. That’s entitlement for you.” The subject of racial appropriation is something Erdrich, an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, has written about before. In The Night Watchman , Erdrich offered a sweeping and tender portrait of the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation of North Dakota in the 1950s and the community’s fight to preserve their land against federal termination policies. At one point in the novel, which was inspired by Erdrich’s grandfather’s experiences, a white male teacher at one of the reservation schools asks the titular character, Thomas, if it’s possible to become Native American through marriage. Thomas, who is Chippewa, is perturbed by this: “He resisted the idea that his endless work, the warmth of his family, and this identity that got him followed in stores and ejected from restaurants and movies, this way he was, for good or bad, was just another thing for a white man to acquire.”

That acquisition is literalized in the context of the bookstore. It attracts affluent white Minnesotans like Flora who want to forge a connection while still feeling like they are in control, because they are there to buy things. In death, Flora raises the ante. If, per Rodriguez, “Indians must be ghosts,” then Flora has now achieved a kind of self-actualization. Settlers are famously insatiable, and Flora, in spirit form, can possess in ways previously unavailable to her. Alone at the bookstore, Tookie hears someone whisper in her ear: “Let me in.” As the book moves deeper into fictionalizing 2020, though, Flora’s ghost starts to feel like a sideshow. COVID first enters the picture in the context of a book tour for fictional Louise, her daughters getting anxious as people crowd around her at a local reading. Yet it is the protests for racial justice that really give The Sentence its urgency, for better and for worse.

Derek Chauvin murdered Floyd just five miles from Birchbark Books, and Erdrich provides a kind of window into how the subsequent uprising impacted the Twin Cities’ Native American community. Her characters are almost uniformly in line with the goals of the BLM movement, seeing their own underreported encounters with police brutality reflected in the experiences of Black Americans. Save for Tookie’s ex-tribal officer husband — who complains about property destruction and propagates the outside-agitator theory — we see little friction between the two communities, even when a Native American nonprofit is burned by an errant amber. This felt like a missed opportunity to reckon with the fissures that do exist, including disputes over Black claims to Native ancestry and tensions with Somali immigrants in Minneapolis specifically. Instead we get speeches like this one from Flora’s Native American step-daughter, which make solidarity seem so simple: “We have to stand with Black people because we know. The MPD has fucking done this to Indians since the beginning of this city. No, before that. They practiced on us in the Dakota War and ever since.”

The introduction of “a novel virus” comes across — much as it did in real life — as a record scratch on the page, a departure from the borderline-twee haunted-bookstore story. The same is true of the protests, but Erdrich’s characters are keen to remind us that this is all related. In mass incarceration and police brutality, Tookie and her supporting cast observe , America is being “haunted” by its original sin of Native dispossession and violent removal, just like Birchbark Books is being haunted by Flora. The Sentence made me wonder if this metaphor might be too capacious for its own good. When Tookie tells a customer that the store has been saddled with Flora’s ghost, he throws back: “This whole city is haunted” — and begins discussing redlining and the ongoing legacy of housing discrimination. I hesitate to complain about moments like this in a country so stubbornly committed to ignorance. Still, I found myself cringing and confused that “history repeats itself” was being presented as a fresh take, begging for the unhinged white-lady ghost to come back and start throwing more contemporary fiction across the room.

It is worth recalling that 2020 was a big year for books , and minority-owned bookstores especially. In the midst of the Black Lives Matter protests, orders for How to Be an Antiracist and similar titles outpaced supply, with some white customers getting … testy. In many ways, Erdrich’s position at the real-life Birchbark Books gave her a sneak peek at the desire for literary absolution. In the book she describes the business as a magnet for wealthy Minnesotans, who all come with their stories: “As a child they slept in a tipi made of blankets, fought cowboys, tied a sister to a tree.” The first half of the novel does not simply meet these types with delicious snark (though it does that too); in Flora, Erdrich treats the extremes to which white people will go to process their guilt as the stuff of nightmares. The Sentence starts off determined to get to the bottom of this centuries-long pathology, before it diverts to scratch the surface of recent events.

Ultimately, the problem with The Sentence is not that it is set in 2020 , but rather that it’s permeated by the false optimism that emerged in the face of multiracial protests, with feel-good resolutions and simplistic narratives about solidarity. No one who joined the marches last summer can deny that it did feel like we were on the verge of something, and Erdrich’s novel, particularly its conclusion, is fused with that confidence. However, by September 2020, Minneapolis city-council officials were already backtracking on commitments to defund the police, with one saying he only agreed to the pledge “in spirit.” Earlier this year, a study by political scientists Jennifer Chudy and Hakeem Jefferson found that support among white Americans for BLM did not merely recede to pre-2020 levels, but actually turned into more pronounced opposition. These letdowns are precisely what make The Sentence feel dated. I too wish that the sense of possibility palpable in the air last summer could come back and haunt us. Because the alternative is truly scary.

• book review
• louise erdrich
• the sentence
• fall 2021 books
• black lives matter
• indigenous fiction
• minneapolis

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The Sentence

70 pages • 2 hours read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.

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Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-8

Chapters 9-13

Chapters 14-18

Character Analysis

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Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Summary and Study Guide

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich is a 2021 novel that celebrates family, Native American identity, the importance of community spaces, and people coming together in love and support. The novel incorporates important events of 2020, such as the murder of George Floyd and the COVID-19 epidemic, as well as contemporary facts about US incarceration rates, racism, and reparations.

Infused with autobiographical allusions to author Erdrich’s own life, the novel explores spirituality, bookstores, stories, and current events as symbolic of the human experience. Erdrich narrates primarily through the first-person point-of-view of the protagonist , Tookie , an Ojibwe (or Chippewa) woman whose character development is informed by a cast of complex secondary characters, including the ghost of a white woman appropriating Native American culture.

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Louise Erdrich, the owner of Birchbark Books in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is a member of the Native American tribe known as the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. A recipient of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, Erdrich is the author of 28 books.

This guides uses the 2021 Kindle edition of The Sentence , published by Harper.

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Content Warning: The book and this guide contain references to illicit drug use and overdose, human trafficking, inappropriate handling of corpses, police brutality, and institutionalized racism.

Plot Summary

The Sentence begins with a crime. Tookie, a Native American woman in Minnesota, steals the body of her crush’s former lover. However, Tookie fails to realize that the corpse is taped with drugs. Tookie is arrested and incarcerated for body stealing, drug transport, and accepting money for doing so. She’s sentenced to 60 years in prison but is released after seven years thanks to the diligent work of her reservation’s lawyer.

After she’s set free from prison, Tookie finds a job at author Louise Erdrich’s bookstore, Birchbark Books. Tookie marries Pollux , a Native American man she’s known for a long time—and the same man who arrested her for her crime. Tookie’s new life is marked by her love of literature, her safe home with Pollux, and her friendships with the other bookstore employees. However, this new life is challenged when the ghost of Flora, an annoying but loyal customer in the bookstore who recently died, begins haunting Tookie. Flora’s adopted daughter gives Tookie the book that Flora was reading when she died. Titled The Sentence , this book is a journal written by an incarcerated Native American woman in the 19th century. Tookie has difficulty reading it, both because the writing is nearly illegible and because her emotional connection to the story overwhelms her. When she discovers a certain sentence on the page that Flora was reading when she died, Tookie nearly dies herself—but stops before finishing the sentence.

Convinced that The Sentence holds some sort of spirit, Tookie attempts to destroy the book. The book is indestructible, however, so she buries it in her backyard. Tookie believes that Flora’s ghost haunts her at the bookstore because of Tookie’s past desecrating of a body. If Tookie can figure out the mystery of The Sentence or a way to destroy it, perhaps she can set Flora’s spirit free.

Tookie and Hetta, Pollux’s niece and Tookie’s unofficial adopted daughter, have a fraught relationship that Tookie hopes will mend when Hetta returns home with an unexpected baby boy named Jarvis. Meanwhile, Tookie is present for the cremation of Flora’s body’s—but is devastated when the cremation doesn’t get rid of Flora’s ghost.

In March, COVID-19 shuts everything down, but Birchbark Books is deemed an essential business. Tookie struggles with her anxieties about the virus and now must also be alone in the store with Flora’s ghost. Eventually, a fellow employee named Pen admits that she too can hear Flora’s ghost and wrote strange notes that felt as if Flora dictated them.

In May, George Floyd is murdered by the Minneapolis police, spurring protests and violent riots. As Minneapolis burns, the world reckons with histories of colonialism, racism, and questionable institutions. Pollux wrestles with his past as a police officer, and Tookie senses a newfound and previously unacknowledged resentment toward Pollux for arresting her. Asema (a bookstore employee) and Hetta become close because they attend protests together, which also brings Hetta and Tookie closer, as Tookie stays home caring for Jarvis. In addition, the protests reunite Hetta and Laurent, Jarvis’s father, who tells a bizarre and mysterious story about his “rugaroo” lineage.

Pollux contracts COVID and is hospitalized for many weeks. Uncertain of his fate, Tookie camps out in the hospital parking lot and waits for news, resolving her resentment toward him and choosing love. Pollux recovers and returns home, starting a revived and harmonious chapter for the family.

Asema discovers the truth about Flora’s ghost and the mysterious and dangerous book The Sentence . Flora died reading the truth about her past, a truth also tied to Tookie’s past: Flora’s ancestor, a white woman, enslaved Tookie’s ancestor in a human trafficking operation and tortured her. The book reveals Tookie’s real name, Lily. Tookie realizes that all the books Flora’s ghost dropped onto the floor contained hints about Tookie’s real name. Pen devises a plan to rid the bookstore of Flora’s ghost, and Flora’s spirit is finally set free.

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The Bizarre Chinese Murder Plot Behind Netflix’s ‘3 Body Problem’

Lin Qi, a billionaire who helped produce the science-fiction hit, was poisoned to death by a disgruntled executive. His attacker now faces the death penalty.

By David Pierson

Lin Qi was a billionaire with a dream. The video game tycoon had wanted to turn one of China’s most famous science-fiction novels, “The Three-Body Problem,” into a global hit. He had started working with Netflix and the creators of the HBO series “Game of Thrones” to bring the alien invasion saga to international audiences.

But Mr. Lin did not live to see “ 3 Body Problem ” premiere on Netflix last month, drawing millions of viewers.

He was poisoned to death in Shanghai in 2020, at age 39, by a disgruntled colleague, in a killing that riveted the country’s tech and video-gaming circles where he had been a prominent rising star. That colleague, Xu Yao, a 43-year-old former executive in Mr. Lin’s company, was last month sentenced to death for murder by a court in Shanghai, which called his actions “extremely despicable.”

The court has made few specific details public, but Mr. Lin’s killing was, as a Chinese news outlet put it, “as bizarre as a Hollywood blockbuster.” Chinese media reports, citing sources in his company and court documents, have described a tale of deadly corporate ambition and rivalry with a macabre edge. Sidelined at work, Mr. Xu reportedly exacted vengeance with meticulous planning, including by testing poisons on small animals in a makeshift lab. (He not only killed Mr. Lin, but also poisoned his own replacement.)

Mr. Lin had spent millions of dollars in 2014 buying up copyrights and licenses connected to the original Chinese science-fiction book, “The Three-Body Problem,” and two others in a trilogy written by the Chinese author Liu Cixin. “The Three-Body Problem” tells the story of an engineer, called upon by the Chinese authorities to look into a spate of suicides by scientists, who discovers an extraterrestrial plot. Mr. Lin had wanted to build a franchise of global television shows and films akin to “Star Wars” and centered on the novels.

Mr. Lin would eventually link up with David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the creators of the television series “Game of Thrones,” to work on the Netflix project. Mr. Lin’s gaming company, Youzu Interactive, which goes by Yoozoo in English, is no stranger to the HBO hit; its best-known release is an online strategy game based on the show called “Game of Thrones: Winter Is Coming.”

Mr. Lin’s fate would change when he hired Mr. Xu, a lawyer, in 2017 to head a subsidiary of Yoozoo called The Three-Body Universe that held the rights to Mr. Liu’s novels. But not long afterward, Mr. Xu was demoted and his pay was cut, apparently because of poor performance. He became furious, according to the Chinese business magazine Caixin.

As Mr. Xu plotted his revenge, Caixin reported, he built a lab in an outlying district of Shanghai where he experimented with hundreds of poisons he bought off the dark web by testing them on dogs and cats and other pets. Caixin said Mr. Xu was both fascinated and inspired by the American hit TV series “Breaking Bad,” about a cancer-stricken chemistry teacher who teaches himself to make and sell methamphetamine, eventually becoming a drug lord.

Between September and December 2020, Mr. Xu began spiking beverages such as coffee, whiskey and drinking water with methylmercury chloride and bringing them into the office, Caixin reported, citing court documents. The report’s details could not be independently confirmed.

Calls to Yoozoo and the Shanghai court went unanswered. Netflix did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“The plot is as bizarre as a Hollywood blockbuster, and the technique is professional enough to be called the Chinese version of ‘Breaking Bad,’” Phoenix News, a Chinese news outlet, said last month.

According to a story by The Hollywood Reporter in January, Mr. Benioff said the killing was “certainly disconcerting.” “When you work in this business, you’re expecting all sorts of issues to arise. Somebody poisoning the boss is not generally one of them,” he was quoted as saying.

Police arrested Mr. Xu on Dec. 18, 2020, the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court said on its official WeChat account as it announced the verdict and sentencing. Mr. Xu reportedly declined to confess to the crime and did not disclose what poison he had used, complicating doctors’ efforts to save Mr. Lin’s life.

The court said that Mr. Xu had plotted to poison Mr. Lin and four other people over an office dispute. Its post included a picture of a bespectacled Mr. Xu in the courtroom wearing an oversized beige cardigan surrounded by three police officers. The statement said more than 50 people, including members of Mr. Xu’s and Mr. Lin’s family, attended the sentencing.

The Three-Body Universe, the Yoozoo subsidiary, did not respond to a request for comment, but its chief executive, Zhao Jilong, posted on his WeChat account, “Justice has been served,” according to Chinese state media.

Before his untimely death, Mr. Lin was something of a celebrity in the world of young Chinese entrepreneurs. He had built his fortune in the early 2010s, riding a wave of popularity for mobile games. His bid to popularize Mr. Liu’s novels was a rare attempt to export Chinese popular culture — something that has eluded China as its government yearns to wield the same soft power the United States commands with its movies, music and sports stars.

Six years after “The Three-Body Problem” was first published in 2008, an English version translated by Ken Liu was released to widespread acclaim. The book won the Hugo Award, a major science-fiction prize, for best novel. It counted Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg among its fans.

While Netflix is not available in China, “3 Body Problem” has still set off a backlash among Chinese viewers who have been able to access the platform by using virtual private networks, or who have seen pirated versions of the show. Users on Chinese social media expressed anger that the Netflix adaptation Westernized aspects of the story, and said the show sought to demonize some of the Chinese characters.

Even the People’s Liberation Army’s propaganda wing has weighed in on the series. In an editorial published on Saturday on its website, China Military Online, it called the Netflix series an example of American “cultural hegemony.”

“It can be clearly seen that after the United States seized this popular intellectual property with its superpower strength, it wanted to transform and remake it,” the editorial said. “The purpose was to eliminate as much as possible the reputation of modern China.”

Li You contributed research.

David Pierson covers Chinese foreign policy and China’s economic and cultural engagement with the world. He has been a journalist for more than two decades. More about David Pierson

Alex Murdaugh sentenced to 40 years in prison for federal financial crimes

C HARLESTON, S.C. — A federal judge sentenced convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh to 40 years in prison Monday for stealing millions of dollars from his legal clients — a punishment that can be served at the same time as a 27-year sentence previously imposed by South Carolina for related crimes.

The stakes had been raised in an otherwise routine sentencing hearing after federal prosecutors said in a filing last week that Murdaugh, 55, failed a polygraph test that he agreed to undergo as part of a plea deal. In addition, they said, they identified 11 new financial victims and another $1.3 million in stolen money.

The former personal injury lawyer faced a much harsher sentence, although U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel is allowing him to serve his prison sentences for state and federal crimes concurrently. He also ordered Murdaugh to pay more than $8 million in restitution to his financial victims.

Each of the various charges in federal court carried a maximum of at least 20 years in prison, the Justice Department said .

Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Limehouse asked Gergel to impose a 30-year sentence, arguing that "we don't believe he is capable of living a law-abiding life as a member of society" and it would send "a very strong message about lawyers stealing money from their clients."

Gergel said he decided to go above that to hold Murdaugh further accountable and bring justice to his victims.

"This is a reprehensible crime that deserves the most serious of sanction," the judge said.

Murdaugh, shackled and wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, appeared emotional as he addressed Gergel.

"I literally am filled with sorrow and am filled with guilt over the things that I did," he said.

Murdaugh is already serving a life sentence without parole for the murders of his wife, Margaret, 52, and their younger son, Paul, 22, in 2021. He is attempting to appeal the conviction.

When Murdaugh pleaded guilty in September to 22 federal financial crime charges, it came with an agreement that he would subject himself to a polygraph. Federal prosecutors said he could be called to "testify fully and truthfully before any grand juries and at any other trials or other proceedings."

But prosecutors said in a filing that Murdaugh breached the agreement, writing that "he ranks as one of the most prolific fraudsters this state has ever seen."

Murdaugh's lawyers denied the allegation and had said in response that they should be able to respond in documents that can be made public.

"To allow the Government to publicly accuse Murdaugh of breaching his plea agreement while also allowing the Government to hide all purported evidence supporting that accusation from the public would violate the public's right to the truth," the filing said.

Federal prosecutors argued that the details must not be released because of an ongoing grand jury investigation.

But Gergel on Monday said the issue was "moot" after attorneys spoke about the prosecution's filing in private chambers.

Murdaugh last year pleaded guilty to 14 counts of money laundering, five counts of wire fraud, one count of bank fraud and other charges. Prosecutors said Murdaugh, who worked at the family's Hampton County law firm, cheated clients out of settlement money and created fraudulent bank accounts.

Among his financial victims was the estate of his family's longtime housekeeper , Gloria Satterfield, who died following a " trip and fall accident " at the Murdaughs' home in 2018.

Satterfield's son, Michael "Tony" Satterfield, addressed Murdaugh on Monday as part of a victim impact statement.

"I pray for you daily," Satterfield said, staring directly at his mother's former employer. "I just want God to work on you and your heart."

The sentencing in federal court comes a year after Murdaugh's high-profile double murder trial, in which he took the stand to deny that he  fatally shot his wife and son , but admitted to some financial misconduct.

State prosecutors accused him of murdering them to gain pity and to distract from financial crimes threatening to topple his reputation in South Carolina's Lowcountry, where three generations of family patriarchs had wielded power as the  top prosecutors  for decades.

Murdaugh said he suffered from a longtime addiction to prescription opioids , which he testified clouded his judgment.

He told the court on Monday that he is "937 days clean."

"I do believe that my addiction contributed to me doing some of the things that I did," Murdaugh said. "And Judge Gergel, I hope with every cell of my existence, I hope that I will not have done what I did had I not been addicted to opioids."

His federal sentencing caps a long-winding legal saga for the once-prominent lawyer.

In January, his defense team attempted to get him a new double murder trial after alleging that a court clerk had tampered with the jury and tainted the verdict as she sought to write a book about the case. But while a judge found that Colleton County Clerk of Court Rebecca Hill was not a wholly credible witness, jurors were not persuaded by her actions

Hill, who resigned from her post last month, had denied in her testimony that she  tampered with the jury  for financial gain or any other reason.

Regardless of what happens with Murdaugh's murder appeal, he will remain in prison for at least four decades.

Juliette Arcodia reported from Charleston and Erik Ortiz from New York.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

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The Sentence Kindle Edition

"Dazzling. . . . A hard-won love letter to readers and to booksellers, as well as a compelling story about how we cope with pain and fear, injustice and illness. One good way is to press a beloved book into another's hands. Read The Sentence and then do just that."— USA Today, Four Stars

In this New York Times bestselling novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning author Louise Erdrich creates a wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage, and of a woman's relentless errors.

Louise Erdrich's latest novel, The Sentence , asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading "with murderous attention," must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.

The Sentence begins on All Souls' Day 2019 and ends on All Souls' Day 2020. Its mystery and proliferating ghost stories during this one year propel a narrative as rich, emotional, and profound as anything Louise Erdrich has written. 

• Print length 395 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publisher Harper
• Publication date November 9, 2021
• File size 3276 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
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Amazon.com review.

A cathartic and comforting story that book lovers will gobble up.

An unexpected ghost story that is both a timely novel with laugh-out-loud moments as well as a beautiful commentary on identity.

Her dramatization of why books are essential to our well-being is resounding.

More than a gripping ghost story, The Sentence offers profound insights into the effects of the global pandemic and the collateral damage of systemic racism.

About the Author

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• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08TWYG991
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper (November 9, 2021)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 9, 2021
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 3276 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 395 pages
• #89 in Native American Literature (Kindle Store)
• #345 in Contemporary Literary Fiction
• #378 in Historical Literary Fiction

About the author

Louise erdrich.

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.

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Producer's death surrounds Netflix's '3 Body Problem': What to know about the 2020 poisoning

A former gaming executive was sentenced to death last month in china for fatally poisoning lin qi, a billionaire whose yoozoo games had links to '3 body problem' on netflix..

A former gaming executive was sentenced to death last month in China for the murder of a billionaire credited as a producer on Netflix's sci-fi series " 3 Body Problem ," according to multiple reports.

Xu Yao was arrested in 2020 shortly after Lin Qi, the founder of the high-profile Chinese gaming company known as Yoozoo Games, was poisoned to death at the age of 39. Shanghai First Intermediate People’s Court found Xu guilty of murder on March 22, the day after "3 Body Problem" premiered on Netflix.

According to the New York Times , Xu had become "disgruntled" after he felt sidelined within the company and set about on a murderous plot to exact revenge on Lin and others within Yoozoo Games, also known as Youzu Interactive.

Lin died 10 days after ingesting tea that Xu reportedly poisoned, according to reports. Four other people in the office who drank poisoned beverages between September and December 2020 also became sick but did not die, according to court records cited by the Associated Press .

What is '3 Body Problem'? Explaining Netflix's trippy new sci-fi and the three-body problem

Yoozoo Games holds rights to book behind '3 Body Problem'

Yoozoo Games owns the adaptation rights to "Remembrances of Earth's Past," a best-selling science fiction trilogy by Chinese author Liu Cixin that is the basis of the Netflix series " 3 Body Problem ."

Created by " Game of Thrones " showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss , the Netflix series tells the story of a humanity confronting a terrifying cosmic threat kicked off by a fateful experiment in 1960s China. Alexander Woo, "True Blood" and "The Terror" writer, also serves as an executive producer on the series, which Yoozoo granted Netflix the right to adapt in 2020.

But it's hardly the first adaption of Liu's books.

Lin, who founded Yoozoo in 2009, reportedly spent millions of dollars in 2014 buying up copyrights and licenses connected to the trilogy in the same year it was first translated into English, the Times reported. The book series, which counts former President Barack Obama as a fan , has also spawned a stage adaptation, an animated series, and the Chinese-language series "Three-Body" that premiered last year.

Lin was credited posthumously as an executive producer on the series .

Lin also hired Xu in 2017 to head a subsidiary of Yoozoo called The Three-Body Universe that held the rights to Liu's novels, according to media reports. However, Xu's poor performance led to a demotion and pay cut less than three years later,  The Times reported , citing Chinese media.

Xu Yao began poisoning colleagues over business dispute

The demotion, paired with a dispute over the running of the busines, is reportedly what motivated Xu to begin poisoning his colleagues three months after the Netflix deal was brokered, according to reports.

Lin is believed to have been fatally poisoned after he ingested a beverage that Xu had laced with poison, the court heard, as reported by the AP. The Hollywood Reporter, citing local media,  reported  at the time Lin was allegedly sickened by a cup of poisoned pu-erh tea.

Of the other four who were sickened by the poisoned food, one of them was Xu's replacement as the head of the subsidiary, according to the Times.

After Lin died, the  BBC reported  that his company issued an emotional statement on its official Weibo microblog.

"Goodbye youth," it said, adding, "We will be together, continue to be kind, continue to believe in goodness, and continue the fight against all that is bad."

Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]