From a rising Native American writer, a haunting and unforgettable novel about love, loss, race, and desire in World War II–era AmericaOn a sweltering day in August 1942, Frankie Washburn returns to his family's rustic Minnesota resort for one last visit before he joins the war as a bombardier headed for the darkened skies over Europe. Awaiting him at the Pines are those he's about to leave behind: his hovering mother, the distant father to whom he's been a disappointment, the Indian caretaker who's been more of a father to him than his own, and Billy, the childhood friend who over the years has become something much more intimate. But before the homecoming can be celebrated, the search for a German soldier who has escaped from the POW camp across the river explodes in a shocking act of violence, with consequences that will reverberate years into the future for all of them and that will shape how each of them makes sense of their lives.With Prudence, Treuer delivers his most ambitious and captivating novel yet. Powerful and wholly original, it's a story of desire and loss and the search for connection in a riven world; of race and class in a supposedly more innocent era. Most profoundly, it's about the secrets we choose to keep, the ones we can't help but tell, and who-and how-we're allowed to love.
"Novelist-memoirist Treuer returns to the northern woodlands with this understated study of cultures in conflict…A self-assured, absorbing story with a grim arc that moves from bad to worse as Treuer explores the darkness at our cores."
Kirkus Reviews
"Ojibwe writer Treuer turns once again to fiction in his achingly moving fourth novel…Treuer adds depth to each of the characters' stories by revealing tidbits of backstory, but it's the saga of Frankie and Billy's thwarted love and the consequences of their actions that feels the most devastating and resonant, haunting both men as they're shipped off to war. Perhaps most fitting is the book's tit
