Prudence
David Treuer’s novel about a young white Princeton graduate, the Ojibwe Indian boy with whom he shares a secret love, and the tragedy that binds them to a troubled Native American girl, is exquisitely written, haunting – and unremittingly bleak.
Frankie Washburn, jauntily heading off to World War II, joins the hunt at his family’s Minnesota lake resort for an escaped German prisoner and, full of manly bravado, shoots and kills a young girl hiding with her sister in the bushes. The remainder of the book unfolds around this initial horror, sending Billy off to war, as well, and the sister, Prudence, into a lifelong spiral of self-abuse, as she waits for Frankie to redeem her. But Frankie, it turns out, cannot save even himself.
Treuer brings his characters to life masterfully, providing each with a distinct and compelling voice. His scenes of love between Frankie and Billy, so tender and affectionate, are deeply touching, as is the ending chapter in which we read Prudence’s full story at last. The author’s skillful prose also treats landscape as a character, using the harsh Minnesota winter to evoke the alienation his Indians feel in white society, and the Pines, the Washburns’ resort, to illustrate nature’s supremacy as its buildings quickly fall into disrepair and begin to crumble.
For all its haunting beauty, though, Prudence lacks even a single note of levity or hope. Rather than a complex tale rich with life’s joys and sorrows, the book is relentlessly grim. Native American life sucks, and white “civilization” is why – but many readers, I’m guessing, won’t stick around long enough to get that message. Its exquisite prose makes Prudence hard to put down, yes, but the despair darkening every page makes it even more difficult to pick back up again.
