Red Earth White Earth

by Will Weaver

Having fled his family’s farm at eighteen with a promise never to return, Guy Pehrsson is drawn back into his past when he receives his grandfather’s ominous letter, “Trouble here. Come home when you can.” He returns to discover a place both wholly familiar and barely recognizable and is cast into the center of an interracial land dispute with the exigencies of war.   Widely acclaimed when first published in the eighties, the timeless novel Red Earth, White Earth showcases Will Weaver’s rough ease with language and storytelling, frankly depicting life’s uneven terrain and crooked paths.

Genres: Fiction, Book Club, Historical Fiction, Native Americans

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

I grew up in the Midwest, and had no idea I'd become a writer one day. However I gradually felt a need to tell my own stories. To explain, in writing, how I saw the world.

Today I'm a full time writer with 13 novels, many short stories, and two movie adaptations. I enjoy visiting schools and libraries, and sharing what I've learned about writing.

My newest novel POWER & LIGHT (Sept 2023) is now out. The first of a two book adult saga, it follows the arc of a Norwegian emigrant family to the Midwest–their hardships and ultimate triumph.

Reviews

[Dan Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting, nice north west minnesota atmosphere. For the most part an engaging book, but there's some totally unnecessary and gross sexual stuff.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a book was an interesting fictional account of the struggles of the Chippewa Indians in Minnesota to keep their land, White Earth Nation. Regular farmers, agribusiness and timber companies all conspired to trick them out of it. I did not think the main character (Guy), the son of a white farmer, was very realistic. I just don't think anyone would have done the things did to help his alcoholic father. For example, he had his Mercedes chopped up in to a pick-up truck for his Dad. Who needs a drunk driver in a Mercedes? The major Indian character, Tom, was also hard to believe. Despite the problems with the characters, it was a good story.

[Sue · Rating 3 out of 5]

So wanted to like this book. But it was disappointing.
Storyline: Native Americans wanting their land back from white farmers who had been working the land for generations.
Main characters didn’t seem realistic in their actions.
And there were more than a little totally unnecessary vivid sexual scenes. For that reason I would not recommend the book.

[Lorlee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Shallow, I kept trying to grab the words and make them stick to the page. Characters were thin. first part of the book about his youth was interesting then it seemed to go nowhere. Caricatures not characters.

[Patty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book set in N. Minnesota in the 1980s and the struggles between local white farmers who live on a reservation. I thought it was good but the ending seemed rushed.

[Andrea Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow that was a rush didn't know what was going to happen next..great book

[Linda Kitner · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. The author was able to paint a picture of the setting as well as the characters that made me feel. I was a part of the story.

[Tonstant Weader · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s strange that I have not read Red Earth, White Earth by Will Weaver years ago. After all, it takes place where I grew up, on White Earth Indian Reservation, and focuses on the controversy that inflamed racial tensions on the Reservation for many of my school years.

It tells the story of a friendship that began and childhood and stayed strong and true despite a ten year absence. It is also a story of a son finding a way to love his father. There’s another story, a romance between a laid-back California guy and an ambitious, buttoned-up East Coast woman. And all of these stories are framed by the conflict between the white farmers and the Anishinaabe Indians of White Earth whose lands were fraudulently taken and sold to white farmers early in the 1900s in response to intense lobbying by banks and farmers. Eighty years later, the Indians sought justice through the courts and all hell broke loose.

Guy Pehrsson grew up on White Earth. His father, Martin, and grandfather, Helmer, were farmers and there was an expectation he would be a farmer, too. His mother, Madeline, wanted more for him. His best friend was Tom LittleWolf. They began their friendship when they were five with Madeline’s blessing and Martin’s disapproval, even antipathy. That friendship remained strong until their junior year when a school trip to the state basketball championships reveals the despair of the urban Indian to Tom, setting him on a different track than Guy.

Guy, too, had ambitions, to get away and go to college. He hoped to earn his tuition and escape the farm by growing flax, a risky but high profit venture, if it would succeed. Guy, though, is forced to choose between family and success and chose family in a heartbreaking chapter early in the book. This sets him off, though, to California where he made his fortune which is where we find him in the prologue, a rich capitalist going home for a visit after his grandfather writes a letter saying they need help.

And he comes home to the big land controversy. This story reminded me so much of growing up. My neighbor’s farms and home titles were in question. For farmers, that meant no collateral for seed loans and farm equipment. It meant unscrupulous bankers calling in loans to foreclose on those who were unable to find the capital to keep going. For many families, it means fathers going to work on the pipeline in Alaska, the good pay there keeping farm and families afloat. Our land was legally purchased so is was easier for my dad to see both sides of the issue, leading to his ouster from the township board for being insufficiently anti-Indian.

One significant difference between the real history and the book is that there was no singular lawyer driving the White Earth Tribal Council’s strategy, but an entire group of Native American lawyers and activists. After all, Clyde and Vernon Bellecourt, two of the founders of the American Indian Movement were White Earth members. Winona LaDuke is from White Earth as well. White Earth produced many activists and their resistance had many leaders, not one. While it makes the story more dramatic to focus the resistance in the fictional Tom LittleWolf, there is more power and agency in the real history of many activists seeking power and the salvation of their tribe.

There were at times I loved this book and times it made me squirm. The young MaryAnn reminds me of a girl who was shunned by all of us, without exception, because of her appalling hygiene, though when we reached adulthood, we learned she like young MaryAnn, was sexually abused by her father and brothers, something no that occurred to none of us. While this scandal came out after the book was written, so it cannot be her, it is so uncomfortably close to home.

The story itself is wonderful. I liked the people, the compassion for everyone, even for Martin, Guy’s difficult father. There’s an understanding of how people work, how racism works and how conflict can build. It rings true. Some of the events happened and I remember them, our neighbor’s cattle being slaughtered in the night, “customs checkpoints” on the reservation border, though that only happened in response to one town setting up a checkpoint at the city limits on Hwy 2, only stopping Indians, a shameful response to a hoax perpetrated by an addict who robbed his grandparents and falsely claimed that he was robbed by Indians with rifles. But the anger was real and people did die, among them one of my classmates when racial animus broke out into a fight at a bar. Actually, maybe I do know why I have not read this book earlier.



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[Susan Sink · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finally bought this book because I kept checking it out of the library every few years.

Will Weaver is a wonderful storyteller (he wrote the story that the film "Sweet land" is based on). He's in the upper echelon for me as Midwestern storytellers go, though he doesn't get the recognition.

This book is dated, I admit. It is (by and?) about a guy who loves a good muscle car. The love interest feels more like a working-class-guy's fantasy than a real woman. Read this book for the farming and the experience of a place where Indian country and rural white people overlap. It's also a great book about father/son relationships.

A neighbor recommended this book to me back in 2006, the first time I read it. I had just moved to rural Minnesota and she said it had the best account of growing flax and flax harvest ever. She was right.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

For some reason, this book reminds me a lot of Jon Hassler's first novel Staggerford. The central character in Staggerford, spends a lot of time trying to broker peace between disputing peoples, and finds himself shot by the novel's end. Tom Littlewolf, in that regard, (oh, spoiler alert), dies believing his cause is furthered by restraining from violence, and allowing diplomacy and legislation to do what he believes violence can not. (Spoiler Alert).

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Weaver's descriptions of the earth...his mindfulness of its impact on our lives, our stories, our minds and thoughts. It's completely Steinbeckian, but afresh and modern in its view and interpretation. There are a few overtly sexual elements I wish didn't tarnish the purity of the story—they just aren't necessary in my opinion. Overall, I love his writing and this book is quintessential Weaver.

If you're interested, try his short stories first. But DO try them.

[Linda Kenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

i am an admirer of Will Weaver's short stories but it took me a while to settle into reading this book. The tension between farmer and native american over land is a continuing issue. Someone said this book was dated but in reality it captures a point in time, in history. In today's news its native americans trying to stop a pipeline across sacred land. In reality we still struggle to understand the attachment to land. That to me is the crux of this book.

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

White farmers have a farm within the boarders of an Indian Reservation. White boy and Indian boy develop lifelong friendship. White boy goes off to California and becomes rich. Indian boy becomes advocate for his people and tries to regain reservation lands for Indians only. White boy returns to farm and dysfunctional family. All hell breaks loose. Story is set in Minnesota, 196o's-'70's.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an amazing story about family and friendships in northern Minnesota. The story knits the characters together like an ill fitting sweater. Guy, Tom and Mary Ann are as vivid as Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher and just as rascally.

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Guy Pehrsson left the White Earth Reservation farm he grew up on and his disintegrating family as soon as he turned 18, vowing never to return. A cryptic message from his grandfather, however, brings him back to deal with the family and heritage that he had abandoned.

[Kenneth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great read, that was also made into a movie about the native american land debate in northern Minnesota. It is close to home for me, and was exciting to read this great novel by Will Weaver who is also from that area.

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fictional story set on White Earth Indian Reservation. Deals with land rights, racism and country living. By Bemidji native.

[Trish Freed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite moving - completely absorbing and disturbing novel about discrimination against Native Americans in a farming community of Minnesota.

[Brenda · Rating 3 out of 5]

For September 2009 NBC - book club

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

A minnesota tale

[Margaret Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

will weaver is a great writer i did not want the story to end