The Road Back to Sweetgrass

by Linda LeGarde Grover

Set in northern Minnesota, The Road Back to Sweetgrass follows Dale Ann, Theresa, and Margie, a trio of American Indian women, from the 1970s to the present, observing their coming of age and the intersection of their lives as they navigate love, economic hardship, loss, and changing family dynamics on the fictional Mozhay Point reservation. As young women, all three leave their homes. Margie and Theresa go to Duluth for college and work; there Theresa gets to know a handsome Indian boy, Michael Washington, who invites her home to the Sweetgrass land allotment to meet his father, Zho Wash, who lives in the original allotment cabin. When Margie accompanies her, complicated relationships are set into motion, and tensions over “real Indian-ness” emerge.

Dale Ann, Margie, and Theresa find themselves pulled back again and again to the Sweetgrass allotment, a silent but ever-present entity in the book; sweetgrass itself is a plant used in the Ojibwe ceremonial odissimaa bag, containing a newborn baby’s umbilical cord. In a powerful final chapter, Zho Wash tells the story of the first days of the allotment, when the Wazhushkag, or Muskrat, family became transformed into the Washingtons by the pen of a federal Indian agent. This sense of place and home is both tangible and spiritual, and Linda LeGarde Grover skillfully connects it with the experience of Native women who came of age during the days of the federal termination policy and the struggle for tribal self-determination.

The Road Back to Sweetgrass is a novel that that moves between past and present, the Native and the non-Native, history and myth, and tradition and survival, as the people of Mozhay Point navigate traumatic historical events and federal Indian policies while looking ahead to future generations and the continuation of the Anishinaabe people.
 

Genres: Fiction, Indigenous, Historical Fiction, Native American, Book Club, Adult Fiction, Novels

208 pages, Paperback

First published September 9, 2014

About the author

Linda LeGarde Grover is a professor emeritus of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth. She is coauthor of A Childhood in Minnesota: Exploring the Lives of Ojibwe and Immigrant Families 1880–1920 and author of a poetry chapbook, The Indian at Indian School. Her 2010 book The Dance Boots won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction as well as the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. Her novel The Road Back to Sweetgrass is the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers 2015 fiction award recipient. Linda's poetry collection The Sky Watched: Poems of Ojibwe Lives has received the Red Mountain Press 2016 Editor's Award and the 2016 Northeastern Minnesota Book Award for Poetry. Grover’s essay collection Onigamiising: Seasons of an Ojibwe Year received the 2018 Minnesota Book Award for Memoir & Creative Nonfiction as well as the Northeastern Minnesota Book Award for Memoir, her novel In the Night of Memory the 2020 Northeastern Minnesota Book Award for fiction as well at the UPAA (Upper Peninsula Publishers & Authors Association) U.P. Notable Book Award.

Grover is an enrolled member of the Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe.

Reviews

[Angela M · Rating 4 out of 5]

The lovely writing in the beginning pages made me long to know the smell sweetgrass. This book is about more than just the main characters. It is about a people, their land, how they lose it and come back to it. It is about their descendants and their identity, about traditions carried over the generations - the Odissimaa Bag and frybread which just has to be delicious.

Life on the Mozhay Point Ojibwe Reservation is depicted with the story of three women and their children from the 70's to the present. It is at times sad but it is also hopeful. My favorite part, other than the beginning pages is the end when Zho Wash tells the story of his family. It is a beautiful piece of writing and a story that needed to be told.



Thanks to The University of Minnesota Press and NetGalley

[Lolly K Dandeneau · Rating 4 out of 5]

It has taken a bit longer to review as I was in the process of moving to another state. Finally, I finished!
The Road Back to Sweetgrass is about three American Indian Women from 1970 to today, about their choices and mistakes in love and life. The beauty of the story is found in how diluted the culture is for some, particularly Margie who has visions of a family and making sweetbread (though she doesn't yet know how)but perhaps sees the wrong man in her vision. Native American or not, those of us that have an ethnic background can relate to feeling 'less' cultured, less aware of the old ways and traditions. The making of Fry-bread was in itself a story of the traditions people carry and pass down. While the women in the story are tangled with each other and are tied to Sweetgrass, I loved the character Zho Wash best. Wise, tender and certainly the gravity of the story, I was drawn to him more than his handsome young son, Michael. Through him we learn what Sweetgrass is, a tradition of burying the umbilical cord, tying a spirit to the land wherever they may wander. It's a beautiful story about home, where and how it's found. It's about love too, in its different forms.
Dale Ann's story is touchingly painful, her experience of leaving home for a career while living with privileged college girls speaks volumes about the haves and have nots. What happens to her never seems easier to stomach, regardless of how many stories we see with the same situation. Admittedly, I don't know a lot about Indian culture, and going to pow wows certainly have never made me an expert, but I feel this author understands what they face. The story certainly had me thinking about their struggles, both culturally and spiritually.
I have a friend who is Native American and hates that stories she reads is always about a white woman being ravaged by an 'Indian', rather than stories she can relate to. This novel is certainly not a fantasy, and will be received well by all. It is a window into the culture and the feelings and struggles they face. I really enjoyed this story. Again, I loved what happened between Zho Wash and Margie. Lovely.

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Three Ojibwe women come of age in the early 1970s and we visit them over the next 40 years as they experience love, loss, and ultimately a sense of belonging.

Poetically written, the story is engaging and beyond that it gently highlights many issues faced by Ojibwe and other Native American groups. Everything from well-meaning racism to coerced adoptions and the sterilisation of Native American women without consent which was still occuring into the 1970s.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

As she did in The Dance Boots, Linda LeGarde Grover brings us into the bosom of Native American culture through her poetic prose. A well done novel that, in subtle ways, tackles some very weighty issues.
As always, a longer review of this book appears at: www.cloquetriverpress.com.
Mark

[Dani Roulette · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Delicious”, my Elder said when she ate the cabbage soup I made for the weekly Ojibwe language program we host. “Weengih-ah-pah-gad” I wrote in my notebook. Later, I read my book, savouring the last 40 pages, not quite ready to leave Mozhay Point or the characters I’d grown attached to.

“I’m not afraid of bears, she would have said, but instead chose to inch closer, as cautiously and subtly as she could, and then closer yet, to the source of that heady scent. In a moment she would be so close to Zho that she would cross the barrier that was his shirt, undershirt and skin; she would look fearlessly out at the world through Zho’s eyes. In a moment.”

and on the next page when they eat, Zho says, “Mino pagwad, tastes good.”

I smiled, feeling very lucky to be Anishinaabe and to have an Anishinaabe book to read. A book that understands me. A book that carries the language both of my parents spoke fluently, but never passed onto me. These characters would understand that. They’d know that restless yearning.

I love Linda LeGarde Grover’s writing style, the community she creates and the people within it. I love how their secrets are revealed in a slow and thoughtful way.

I’ll be recommending this novel to everyone, I’d already started to, even before finishing it. It’s beautiful and certain of itself, which I think is a good way to be. Kitchi nishiin!

[Jessie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, much like the other, is bittersweet, but I would say a bit sweeter than the author’s forthcoming In the Night of Memory. It spans decades and characters on and around a fictional Ojibwe rez, and despite being a shorter read, it does it well. We mostly get to know a few generations of women tied together by friendship, and secrets, and the realities of living in a place where everyone knows your business. People are flawed but human and loveable. It’s an achievement to see so much respect given to the imperfect and struggling. It also calls out land theft and the 60’s scoop (idk what you folks call the theft on indigenous babies in the states - but that’s how we know it up north), and the terrible ways that Indigenous women are seen as without value and treated so brutally away from home and community. It also touches on the intergenerational nature of trauma. It’s a skillfully written story. Is the story too sweet for my cynical tastes? I think not. Life is a beautiful thing despite all the structural oppression bullshit, and this book let us have the truth and the beauty. Check it out.

[Gail · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed The Road Back to Sweetgrass -- set in Northern Minnesota, it takes its three Ojibwe characters from the early 1970s to present day, from Chicago to the Mozhay Point Reservation and a special piece of land (which the title of the book points to). I especially loved the character of Margie and very much felt her disappointment in love, her feelings of being overlooked and forgotten, and her weariness in later life working as a concierge at casino. There's a funny and amazing scene of wild ricing, which I've always wondered about. LeGarde Grover writes wonderful dialogue, which captures the rhythms and customs of all her characters with humor and perception.

[Erika Wurth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Linda Grover is not only a fantastic novelist but a fantastic person, I must say. In any case, this novel was so close to home it nearly broke my heart. Such beautiful language and such piercing descriptions of people that I feel like I know, not only because I do know people like this, but because Linda does such a lovely job of describing people who are living in the best way they know how, and trying for more. Dale Ann's story especially made my heart ache & sing, & the end of the novel made me squee with delight .

[Maggie Sievers · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you like Louise Erdrich's books about the Ojibwe, you will love Grover's debut novel just as much. Glover writes so beautifully, each word and phrase capturing the sweet intertwining of history and myth, to create for the reader a look into the current lives of Natives in the sweet grasses of northern Minnesota.

Strong and gentle and loving are the adjectives I ascribe to the three woman characters Margie, Dale Ann, and Crystal. They loved deeply, were mistreated often by the men they loved as well as the federal government in charge of their very existence.

Following a lively discussion in my book group, I have to add that I will definitely read this again to take note of all the metaphors and to savor the poetry of Linda Grover's prose. One woman called it the most sensuous book she'd ever read. I found that an interesting description, and upon reflection, I'd have to agree.

I loved this book and it made me want to travel to far northern Minnesota once again.

[Mardith Louisell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sweetgrass is the second of three in a trilogy set on the Mozhay Reservation in northern Minnesota: The Dance Boots; The Road Back to Sweetgrass; and, her most recent, In the Night of Memory.

The Road to Sweetgrass concentrates on a generation of Ojibwe women coming of age and one man from an older generation. Through these four and the family, friends and a few strangers who enter their lives, we hear the stories of what happens to them from the time they were teens to middle age. As in LeGarde Grover’s previous book, The Dance Boots, the characters move through life and its tragedies, not as though each tragedy is the end, but as though tragedies are part of the one’s world, always have been, always will be. The particulars of life on Indian land in northern Minnesotais described in detail. By that I mean, one learns how homes looked on the inside, how fry bread is made, how one cleans a tar paper house (provided by the self-proclaimed, “generous” federal government after a forced relocation scheme for the tribe – “You can take . . . , Mr. Muskrat, anything you can carry away; Mrs. Muskrat, you, too. The federal government is going to build another house here for the LaForce family, and I can promise you that the same will be done for you at the place you decide on by the river. I have the authority to do that. These will be warm, tar-papered lumber houses, very fine houses, with raised floors. Your missus will like that.”), surviving rape and becoming pregnant, how to rice – the full range of human emotions and tragedies. It reminded me of Claire Denis’s 35 Shots of Rum, a peerless movie about North Africans in Paris, which portrays North Africans, not North Africans in relation to whites, as most movies here do, but as themselves in their setting. It’s a world apart from the dominant society but infiltrated by it in large and small ways. Characters you’ll meet in Sweetgrass: Margie Robineau, the paternity of whose daughter Crystal no one knows for sure, despite lots of gossip; Zho Washington, a kind man whose first wife he never touched because he fell in love with her while she was in a TB sanatorium and whose second wife left him because she wanted more fun than an old man on a reservation could provide; the Dionne girls, according to a woman elder, the only nice one being Dale Ann named because her father was crazy about Roy Rogers; and their mother, Grace Dionne: “We never knew exactly how old (Grace) was, . . . . and because she wasn’t from Mozhay but from somewhere in Louisiana, it was impossible for Mrs. Minogeezhik and Beryl Duhlebon, the reservation experts on linkages between genealogy and behavioral and physical characteristics, to establish a explanation for her aggressive housekeeping and strict child rearing.”

LeGarde Grover’s great gift is her voice and tone, a delicate way of noticing people and what they do and what that engenders in their lives. The people the author places at the forefront, she treats with kindness and understanding. She doesn’t chastise them for their faults or behavior, or exonerate them. She simply describes what is.

Although LeGarde Grover documents poverty, lack of medical services, and the obtrusiveness, plain foolishness and meanness of the federal government, another of her great gifts is never prescribing how a reader should think about what has happened to our First Persons. Nor does she emphasize the poverty in a way that makes a reader pity her characters and think, “Oh, my God, how awful. How can anyone bear it?” She relates in a trustworthy voice a story about three girls and a man and their way of life so that one reads it as a fellow human being, not as an anthropologist looking at foreign specimens.

Recommended highly.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

A moving multi-generational story told with the gracefulness of a poet.

[Shelby Harper · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this novel and didn't want to put it down once I started reading. It's the story of three Anishinaabe women and the intersection of their lives from the 1970s to present. The book gives an authentic look at how the federal government's termination policies of allotment and relocation played in the lives of Indians. But that's a subtle point, and could go unnoticed because of the gorgeous prose and the story itself, which hooks the reader. As I finished the last page, I felt satisfied with the story, but also sad to say goodbye to the characters.

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though this book is promoted as a novel, it feels very much like a series of linked short stories, not unlike the author's Dance Boots. Normally I would be disappointed, but in this case it is an effective way to gradually divulge the intricacies of Native American culture, of facility relationships, and the results of patronizing injustice. Grover's use of language is exquisite and powerful.

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great read about life on a reservation north of Duluth. Strangely reminded me of Olive Kitteredge, which I also read this weekend, as a series of interconnected short stories about a community, with hints of what happens to the characters in other stories. Well worth reading!!

[Michelle Boyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely adored this book from the moment I found it on a shelf at the local bookstore. It recounts the stories of three different American Indian (Ojibwe) women who have varying backgrounds. The novel discusses culture, our connections to culture, and how individuals can feel distanced from their culture based on how they were raised, where they were raised, etc. There are also several significant passages about birthing and motherhood.

Some grim depictions of United States policy in regards to indigenous peoples is also presented throughout the text. There is a harrowing example of forced sterilization, issues faced during termination including allotment policies, and generalized racism that continues today. For every dark passage though, there is always hope of progress.

Wonderful writing, deep and enriched characters, and something I'd love to someday add to a syllabus on American Indian literature. Cannot wait to read more of Grover's work.

[kt jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

There was something quietly poetic about the narrative structure in this book. I felt less of a reader and more of a fictional community member, receiving bits and pieces of someone’s full story at a time and bearing witness to the hardship not only within the struggle towards Tribal self-determination but also in coming of age. Quite skillful and insightful.

[Martha · Rating 5 out of 5]

In The Road Back to Sweetgrass, Linda LeGarde Grover portrays the interconnected lives of three Ojibwe women and their families from the fictional Minnesota reservation Mozhay Point. Grover conveys a deep sense of place and identity via gorgeous prose and in intimate detail in this short novel, her first. Make this the next reading for your book club.

[Trudy Ackerblade · Rating 5 out of 5]

Linda LeGrade Grover presents a poetic tale of the First Peoples trail through their conquered land and lives. How they lost all and are finally finding the resilience and resources to fight their way back to embrace their culture and land with dignity.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a sweet and beautiful novel that leaves some things mysterious. Focusing on Native Americans in Minnesota, it weaves together several stories, and includes harvesting wild rice and making fry bread. The language is lovely.

[Lily W]

Holding back on rating this book! I think I would need to read a physical copy instead of an audio book to fully take in and reflect on the themes in this story. With the audio book, I felt a little lost and wasn’t able to ground myself with the story or the characters.

[Jonny Parshall · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful tale. It is a tale of family, and homecoming. While it's a bit tricky to follow, it all makes sense eventually. I am glad I read it.

[Eliza Crane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing writing, great story about family life, I learned a lot about native life in Minnesota and women's experiences in the 70's.

[sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actual Rating: 3.5 stars

review coming soon

[Sara Dean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful novel. The use of timelines, the dialogue, the characters, the setting.... all the elements were there. But more than that, the story and the language were beautiful; the prose danced. I'll look for more of her books to read.

[Natalie Mulmule · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing is so smooth and comforting, I honestly could have continued reading this book until the end of time

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 a beautiful story with a lingering sadness. A liked some parts very much, especially zho and Margie's stories. I found Dale Ann's time in Chicago difficult to get through. But I agree with other reviewers who have said so many story lines were dropped for example what happened when Dale Ann reunited with her son? Did she ever tell the truth about how he was conceived? I was glad to see she ended up with Jack but how did it happen? What about Theresa? A lot was skipped over and I was left a little unsatisfied. Edit: I've just discovered there's a sequel so scratch that!

[Ozaawaa Giizhigoong · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was warm comfort, like fire light. Gentle thoughtful characters all of whom captured my heart. Dale-Ann's story, very understated, stately strength, very realistic in details. Loved how the characters were always themselves, even if they moved from the rez to city, and vice versa. Dag's story was hilarious, and the ending was perfect, all full circle.... More, please.

[Richie Swanson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Linda Legarde Grover

Linda Legarde Grover of the Bois Forte Band of Ojibwa joined the ranks of the world’s greatest novelists last year, publishing The Road Back to Sweetgrass. She renders the boarding school era and reservation life as powerfully as John Steinbeck migrant farmers, Albert Camus Algeria, Tim O’Brien Vietnam, Leslie Silko Pueblo life.

Grover’s short-story collection The Dance Boots won the 2009 Flannery O’Connor Award. It includes Four Indians in the Mirror, a masterpiece as fine as Silko’s Yellow Woman and John Sky’s One They Gave Away, translated from Haida by Robert Bringhurst. Told in contemporary style, the story encapsulates with all the visceral power of indigenous myth-telling the harrowing impacts of racism and discrimination, the human bond of brothers and tribes, the grit of war vets in a Minneapolis bar.

Grover’s novel asks who owns the land--the name on a government paper--or the descendants of an umbilical cord buried in sweetgrass? Her fiction evokes the prohibition of Indian language, the disciplinarian’s belt, the lockup room in the missionary school’s basement, white hands examining a “spoiled” Ojibwa girl, administering Ojibwa births and taking away Ojibwa babies.

Mothers, sisters and aunts beautifully pass on culture under assault, sometimes succeeding, sometimes not. Grover’s protagonists spread through her stories like birds through air and berries shaken into baskets, rendering families much larger than nuclear. Her scenes and characters move as fluidly as dreams through sleep, with so much immediacy I woke from them, asking, “What was it?” I re-read both books together, they grew richer.

Grover’s truth-telling mourns, heals, haunts and also celebrates survival.

--Richie Swanson, author, First Territory, Yakama War novel

[Bethany Ebert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book from the library earlier this week, and was glad for its existence during the recent power outage here in Minnesota. In the book, we meet a group of people whose lives are related in a variety of ways. The chapters go through several decades, during which romances are formulated and then broken-up, families go through changes, women find careers and struggle to fit in - all things that happen in real life, but somehow written out it seems like a TV show like Buffy the Vampire Slayer where you fall in love with the characters and when it's over you are sad to see them go. I liked it.

I found myself identifying with the characters, especially Dale Ann, who is a bit of a goody-two-shoes as seen through the eyes of her peers. I felt so bad for her because she never got the happy ending that I felt she deserved - I might have cried, but it's hard to say. It was a nice surprise when I got to the end of the book and her life actually did turn out okay. Good for her.

I also liked the story of Margie. I think it's important because sometimes you expect your life to turn out one way, and you get your hopes up, and then your life turns out completely different, and it's not the way you thought but it's not bad either. I would recommend this book to anyone. I did take off one star because there were a few phrases in italics and I didn't understand why they were in italics - I thought perhaps it was a formatting error, but then considered maybe there was some particular reason they were italicized - anyway, I couldn't figure it out, and it was distracting.

[Peggy · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 really. It had a bit of the awkwardness that even good editing can’t cover but the interwoven stories were so compelling, the characters not deeply drawn because this was an ensemble cast, and a bit of a twist at the end although not if you were paying attention. My main critique is that the resolution, if any, between Dale Ann and her son, Dag, is not portrayed. I feel as though Dale Ann had a happy ending but without that scene, I feel that story line was dropped. As was that of Theresa and Michael. Although I have the sense that was a dead end strand. She packed a LOT into this fairly short book. I hope her future fiction drills deeper with fewer characters, although I love the community in this book. Read it, it’s worth the four-five hours for sure. We need more of this kind of book from Indian Country.