Breakaway Books

Authored by Louise Eldrich; Published September 2024; Fiction

⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 🏖️

I struggled with The Mighty Red the whole way through. Undeniably compelled by elements of the story, I could not help but be equally repelled by the treatment of the women in the novel and the reminder of just how misguided teenagers can be.

The Mighty Red follows Kismet and Gary, two teenagers who marry shortly after finishing high school. Kısmet is bright and undoubtedly bound for college and a bright career, while Gary the football star seems directionless, especially after a horrific accident that took two of his friends’ lives. Simultaneously, Kismet’s father disappears from town with the church’s renovation fund, leaving her mother in the lurch with a surprise mortgage on her home. 

The book effortlessly drew me in to the ins and outs of beet farming, teaching me about a way of life so very far from my own. Different families in the novel have radically different approaches to farming, and the discourse reveals much about how we interact with the environment. Can we tame, even kill, the parts of the ecosystem that inconvenience us? Or is it possible that we can’t yet understand the impact our actions, even our smallest actions, have upon the earth? Can we care about the environment when we’re just trying to put food on the table? Farming is the lifeblood of Kismet’s community and her mother’s livelihood, and this backdrop was surprisingly fascinating to me.

Conversely, I felt myself cringe every time Kismet explained why she married Gary. I don’t spend a lot of time with teenagers, and at times, perhaps because of my lack of exposure, her logic proved absolutely, jaw-droppingly shortsighted. I was appalled that her mother-in-law treated her like a live-in maid, and I was annoyed beyond comprehension when the men around her insisted on pouring their traumatic experiences into her. Get a therapist, not a wife/girlfriend/female friend! For me, it was incredibly difficult to read about yet another teenage girl taken off track by other people’s desires for her life.

The Mighty Red is a window into another life, a farming community that struggles to survive, and I’m glad that I got to look through it. But I could go the rest of my life without seeing any more teenagers make poor life decisions.