The Hiawatha
David Treuer
Read November 2007
Copy borrowed from Ramsey County Public Library, White Bear Lake branch
Essay written February 22nd, 2008
Great cover. Silvery, with a stylized Indian running.
It's no secret that I'm not a fan of Minneapolis. I'm a Ramsey County guy. But this depicted a pretty interesting town. The gritty underbelly of a cold metropolis. Franklin Street. I only vaguely know where most of the locations in this book are. But it doesn't matter. This could have been Oklahoma City, a town I've never been to. It was a good book regardless.
I don't remember the characters' names, but the scene in which the main guy and his brother and his brother's girlfriend sneak into the worksite after hours and go up to the top of the unfinished skyscraper, and the dude is walking around on the girders, unsupported, where he could have fallen down into space -- that scene freaked me out. I read it while I was at work, in the breakroom. I had my feet up on a chair, and I had to take my feet down and touch the ground with them. A terrifying sense of vertigo. That's a pretty powerful book, that can inspire a feeling like that.
The northern Minnesota scenes were good too. On the Rez.
Unbelievably dark though. Grim. I kind of liked that.
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