The Night Watchman: A Novel

Patrice had come to think that humans treated the concept of God, or Gizhe Manidoo, or the Holy Ghost, in a childish way. She was pretty sure that the rules and trappings of ritual had nothing to do with God, that they were ways for people to imagine they were doing things right in order to escape from punishment, or harm, like children.

As Indians had for generation after generation, they were attempting to understand a white man reading endlessly from a sheaf of papers.

How sad it was not to be sad.

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.

They both started laughing in that desperate high-pitched way people laugh when their hearts are broken.

When Thomas thought of his father, peace stole across his chest and covered him like sunlight.

Zhaanat’s knowledge was considered so important that she had been fiercely hidden away, guarded from going to boarding school. She had barely learned to read and write on the intermittent days she had attended reservation day school. She made baskets and beadwork to sell. But Zhaanat’s real job was passing on what she knew.

if you should ever doubt that a series of dry words in a government document can shatter spirits and demolish lives, let this book erase that doubt.

It was a quilt of patches left over from the woolen coats that had passed through the family. Here was his mother’s navy blue. It had been made from a trade wool blanket and to a blanket it had returned. Here were the boys’ padded plaid wool jackets, ripped and worn. These jackets had surged through fields, down icy hills, wrestled with dogs, and b