If you liked
Books like The Round House
by Louise Erdrich
The Round House is Louise Erdrich's National Book Award winner, a coming-of-age set on a North Dakota reservation as a teenage boy seeks justice after his mother is attacked and the law fails her. Urgent and heartbreaking. If you want more powerful Native American fiction, these are the reads.
The shortlist
What to read next
The Night Watchmanby Louise Erdrich
“The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich 2020 review. A Turtle Mountain Chippewa night watchman fights the 1953 federal termination policy. Pulitzer Prize 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.”
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.”
Sing, Unburied, Singby Jesmyn Ward
“Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward 2017 review. A thirteen-year-old biracial boy and his drug-addicted mother drive to Parchman Penitentiary. National Book Award winner.”
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 Round House read-alikes
- I want more Louise Erdrich.
- The Night Watchman is the one, her Pulitzer winner based on her grandfather's fight against Native termination policy in the 1950s. Same deep roots in reservation life, same blend of the political and the intimate.
- I want more contemporary Native American fiction.
- There There by Tommy Orange and its follow-up Wandering Stars bring urban Native lives into sharp, polyphonic focus. The Berry Pickers and The Only Good Indians round out a rich recent shelf. All share Erdrich's urgency.
- I want the true-crime history behind the fiction.
- Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann investigates the 1920s murders of the Osage and the systems that enabled them. It is the narrative non-fiction counterpart to The Round House's fight for justice.
- I want another lyrical novel about family and injustice.
- Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward carries the same haunted, lyric intensity in the American South. Different community, same refusal to let injustice stay in the past.
The original