Years from now, when people ask me what it was like to live through 2020, this is the book I’ll point them to. I wasn’t sure what to make of the book for the first third or so. It’s disjointed. It felt like the story, about a haunting at a bookstore, was getting interrupted by a few too many musings on various experiences. At times it reads more as an excuse to review other books than to write a new one. Then the story is further interrupted by the beginning of the pandemic and the unrest of the summer of protests in reaction to police violence, much as they did our lives last year, and, I’m assuming, Erdrich’s writing process . By the end of the story, all of it, even these social upheavals, are scooped up nicely into a story that is interested in what it means to be haunted - in more ways than one - by past, present, and future. I don’t think it’s her strongest book but it was a welcome opportunity to reflect on the past year.