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The first half of the novel is signature Erdrich and then some: righteously funny, magically eclectic, and refreshing in its moral clarity.

In the case of The Sentence, that’s plenty. There are books, like this one, that while they may not resolve the mysteries of the human heart, go a long way toward shedding light on our predicaments. The Sentence testifies repeatedly to the power books possess to heal us and, yes, to change our lives. There is something wonderfully comforting in the precise recollection of such furtive memories, like someone quietly opening a door onto a little slice of clarity. The Sentence is rife with passages that stop you cold, particularly when Erdrich.articulates those stray, blindsiding moments that made 2020 not only tragic but also so downright weird and unsettling. But the virtues here so outweigh the flaws that to complain seems almost like ingratitude. The novel gets a little baggy after a while, as Erdrich struggles to juggle multiple plotlines. And that’s just the first half of the story, before the pandemic, before George Floyd. The Sentence covers a lot of ground, from ghosts to the joys and trials of bookselling to the lives of Native Americans and inmates doing hard time. Moving at its own peculiar rhythm with a scope that feels somehow both cloistered and expansive, The Sentence captures a traumatic year in the history of a nation struggling to appreciate its own diversity. The novel’s ectoplasm hovers between the realms of historical horror and cultural comedy.

The great arc of first 30 pages - zany body-snatching! harrowing prison ordeal! opposites-attract rom-com! - could have provided all the material needed for a whole novel, but Erdrich has something else in mind for The Sentence: This is a ghost story - though not like any I’ve read before.

Such is the mystery of Erdrich’s work, and The Sentence is among her most magical novels, switching tones with the felicity of a mockingbird. Neither a grim rehashing of the lockdown nor an apocalyptic exaggeration of the virus, her book offers the kind of fresh reflection only time can facilitate, and yet it’s so current the ink feels wet.

The coronavirus pandemic is still raging away and God knows we’ll be reading novels about it for years, but Louise Erdrich’s The Sentence may be the best one we ever get.