If you liked
Books like The Night Watchman
by Louise Erdrich
The Night Watchman is Louise Erdrich's Pulitzer winner, based on her grandfather's real fight against a 1950s bill that would have stripped his Chippewa community of its rights and land. Warm, funny and quietly furious. If you want more Native American fiction with this heart, read on.
The shortlist
What to read next
The Round Houseby Louise Erdrich
“The Round House by Louise Erdrich 2012 review. A thirteen-year-old Ojibwe boy investigates the rape of his mother in 1988 North Dakota. National Book Award winner.”
There Thereby Tommy Orange
“There There by Tommy Orange 2018 review. Twelve Native American characters converge on the Big Oakland Powwow. PEN/Hemingway Award 2019 and the canonical contemporary urban Indigenous American literary novel.”
Wandering Starsby Tommy Orange
“Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange 2024 review. The historical-and-contemporary follow-up to There There. The Red Feather ancestral chain from Sand Creek 1864 through the present.”
The Berry Pickersby Amanda Peters
“The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters 2023 review. A 1962 Mi'kmaq blueberry-picking family loses a four-year-old daughter in rural Maine. Andrew Carnegie Medal winner 2024.”
Killers of the Flower Moonby David Grann
“Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann 2017 review. The 1920s murders of dozens of Osage people in Oklahoma after the discovery of oil. The Apple TV / Scorsese film source and Grann's narrative non-fiction breakthrough.”
The Only Good Indiansby Stephen Graham Jones
“The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones 2020 review. Four Blackfeet men who committed a hunting transgression are tracked across the present-day American West by something that wants the moral debt paid. Bram Stoker Award 2020.”
FAQ
Common questions about The Night Watchman read-alikes
- I want more Louise Erdrich.
- The Round House is the natural pairing, her National Book Award winner about a boy seeking justice after his mother is attacked on their reservation. Same deep sense of place, same mix of the personal and the political.
- I want more contemporary Native American voices.
- There There and Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange bring urban Native experience into vivid, many-voiced focus, and The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters is a quiet, aching family mystery. All sit beside Erdrich on a rich recent shelf.
- I want the history that context this.
- Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann documents the 1920s Osage murders and the theft that drove them, the narrative non-fiction behind the injustices Erdrich dramatizes. Gripping and essential.
- I want Native horror or something with an edge.
- The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones is a haunting rooted in Blackfeet identity, literary horror with real teeth. A sharp change of register that stays in the same cultural world.
The original