Set on a North Dakota reservation, Louise Erdrich's latest exploration of Native-American life takes the form of a classic coming-of-age narrative. When Joe's mother is violently raped he takes it upon himself to find her assailant; together with his best friend, Cappy, he tries to restore some order to his world, while his mother retreats further and further into hers, shutting herself away in her bedroom, refusing to eat.

To begin with there are definite echoes of Stand By Me to the story: Joe and his friends are on the cusp of adulthood, but at the same time they are still very much boys. The full horror of Joe's mother's attack exists on their periphery; in their search for evidence they are often sidetracked by debates about Star Trek: The Next Generation and, when they are spying on one potential suspect, the volatile, battle-damaged Father Travis, they are distracted by the fact that he owns Alien on VHS.

Erdrich creates a real sense of community in her descriptions of Joe's life on "the rez". There is poverty and sometimes even violence but there is also a sense of family and connection, spread over generations, battalions of bawdy grandmas and ancient grandfathers with stories to tell, the gentle presence of ghosts.

What begins as a tense and gripping mystery gradually evolves into something else as a murky mixture of legal and boundary issues makes prosecuting Joe's mother's attacker incredibly difficult. The need to avenge a crime that might otherwise fall through the cracks becomes central and Joe is dragged into adulthood in the ugliest way imaginable.