When I was looking for a historical fiction written by an indigenous author I knew right where to go because back in 2021 the Indigenous Reading Circle was featured in a Reading Women Podcast Reading Challenge, and I’ve been following them on Instagram ever since. This year they are highlighting native women in fiction and Perma Red by Debra Magpie Earling, a complicated coming of age set on the Flathead Reservation in the 1940s, was their February selection.
The story follows Louise White Elk as she approaches adulthood. Louise dreams of the freedom to live life on her own terms and an improved future for her family, especially her sister and the grandmother they live with following the death of their mother. But her life is dominated by the institutions that dictate what she is supposed to be doing at any given time. Louise’s dreams for herself also run against the desires of three men who have their own plans. Louise has been pursued by Baptiste Yellow Knife for years. He is feared by many, and Louise’s grandmother tells her to keep away from him and his family even as Louise feels drawn to him, knowing the dangers. Baptiste’s rival is his cousin, Charlie Kicking Woman who is caught between his duty and his preoccupation with Louise. And then there is Harvey Stoner, the white real estate mogul whose promises come at a cost. Perma Red was originally published in 2002 and won a slew of awards (American Book Award, 2003, Washington State Book Award, 2003, Spur Award for Best Novel of the West, 2003, WILLA Literary Award for Contemporary Fiction, 2003) but within a year of its publication the publisher was out of business and the novel was out of print. It was reissued in 2022 by Earling’s new publisher Milkweed, which is the edition I read.
Earling is doing a lot in this book, and it is easy to see why it won the awards it did, and why it remained so firmly in literary conversation to call for its reissue. Earling, a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, has transformed her family history – Louise is based in part on Earling’s aunt – into a narrative which explores all the ways in which a woman, especially a native woman, could be too much, and the dangers that come with being a woman at all, and the variety of perspectives that exist in any given moment. Louise’s adolescence becomes a pattern of flight, always moving away from something and towards something – or someone – else. But the someones are never healthy and that feeds the forward momentum of the story. One of the things that stood out to me about Perma Red is that the chapters shift POV between Charlie in the first person and Louise and Baptiste in the third. Even in this small way Earling reminds us of the agency removed from young, native women.