The Sentence

Encourage readers to connect the book’s themes and characters with their personal experiences.

1. How did you feel about Tookie’s decision to steal Budgie’s body? What about the sentence she received for it? What ethical considerations inform your response?

2. Birchbark Books features heavily throughout the novel. How did you respond to Erdrich’s depictions of this setting? Have you had a similar attachment to a bookstore or library?

3. Consider your recollections of the 2020 era. Did your experience most resemble Tookie’s, Pollux’s, Hetta’s, or Asema’s? Which aspects of the novel’s COVID-19 depictions were most or least relatable for you?

4. The novel explores themes of community, love, and connection amid isolation. How did you relate to these explorations? Did they resonate with your own experiences?

5. Imagine that you had repeated encounters with the ghost of a person you used to know. Would you behave the same way Tookie behaves? What would you do differently, and why?

Examine the book’s relevance to societal issues, historical events, or cultural themes.

1. The novel is set in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during 2020 and references historical events from the era. Discuss Erdrich’s representation of George Floyd’s murder and the social justice movement surrounding it. How do the characters’ responses to contemporary events relate to Erdrich’s explorations of human rights and historical atrocities?

2. The novel’s protagonist and primary narrator is a Chippewa woman. How does Tookie’s background inform Erdrich’s explorations concerning identity, history, and resilience? What commentary does the novel offer on the contemporary Indigenous experience?

3. Tookie is haunted by Flora’s ghost throughout the novel. How does Erdrich use Flora’s character—both living and dead—to comment on white guilt and its relationship to Indigenous oppression?

Dive into the book’s structure, characters, themes, and symbolism.

1. The novel is primarily written from Tookie’s first-person point of view. What is the narrative, formal, and thematic significance of this vantage point? Explore how the novel’s atmosphere, mood, and conflicts would differ if it were entirely written from the third-person point of view.

2. Discuss the relatability and complexity of the primary characters. Explore the literary devices Erdrich uses to add dimension to Tookie, Pollux, Flora, and Hetta.

3. How does the novel’s Minneapolis backdrop relate to the novel’s overarching mood? Discuss how the novel’s plot line, conflicts, and stakes would differ if The Sentence were set in another American city.

4. Discuss the symbolic significance of Birchbark Books. Consider how the characters relate to the setting and the events that take place there. Is the bookstore more than a literary device?