Banana-Pecan Bread in Round House // Cook Your Books
In this Cook Your Books series, I have chosen 15 books to read in 2017 based on somewhat arbitrarily chosen categories. My theory (bogus it might turn out to be) is that all 15 of these books will somehow connect to food. And I plan to write about that food. And it turns out that these entries are a sort of long-form blog-post. So settle in. This fifth installment is a National Book Award winner . In a world going increasingly mad, reading seems to be an increasingly political act to me. And so it is with the inimitable Louise Erdrich, who has always been a political writer. Such is no more evident than in her National Book Award winning novel Round House . The book opens with 13-year-old Joe Coutts digging out tiny trees whose roots have attacked his parents' house at the foundation--a laborious activity he engages in with his father. In perhaps a beleaguered metaphor, within pages we learn that Joe wants to root out the mystery of who has da...