Kent Nerburn is the Minnesota author of several books on spirituality and Native American themes including the internationally acclaimed books Neither Wolf nor Dog, The Wolf At Twilight, and Chief Joseph and the Flight of the Nez Perce.
His new book is a novel called Lone Dog Road. The story revolves around two young Lakota brothers on the run from a boarding school government agent. They journey across the prairies of South Dakota in search of pipestone in Minnesota to replace their great-grandfather’s čhaŋnúŋpa, or sacred pipe, broken by that government agent.
In a recent What We’re Reading interview, Kent explained that the book was born out of the isolation and separation we endured during the pandemic.
“I wasn't sure what I was going to do during the pandemic. And I said, ‘This is a chance for me to write the book that I wanted to write.’ I wanted to write a book that was a pure novel and was inhabited by people that I cared about in a story that I cared about.”
The story of Lone Dog Road was largely inspired by an old photograph of a young Ojibwe boy Kent had come across during his work in Red Lake, around 25 years ago.
Kent described the boy in the photo: “He was about 11 or 12…he was looking right at the camera and I was looking back at him and he always remained in my memory as sort of an indictment of what we had done as a nation to the native people...He was a personage in my psyche.”
After decades haunted by the image, Kent decided that the boy in the photo would become one of his main characters, Levi, who is tasked with being his younger brother Reuben’s protector.
Spirituality and land
Kent’s books are known for highlighting themes of spirituality and nature and Lone Dog Road keeps in this tradition. He noted how the power of nature and spirituality and the sacred power of the pipe are like currents running through the story, eventually joining to show that there is a larger force we all participate in.
This is demonstrated in Kent’s character Karl-Martin, a man who once studied to be a priest, but instead married his wife Lillie, a Lakota woman, and moved to the prairie to become a farmer. Karl-Martin and Lillie befriend the two boys on their journey.
In the story, Karl-Martin comes upon a massive prairie fire that should have left him dead. Kent described, “The thing is almost alive. And he feels that it's alive. He feels that it has almost a malevolent purpose and that he sensed more spiritual power in that prairie fire than he had in all his theological training. It didn't destroy or negate his theological training or his Christianity, it just expanded it into something larger.”
Kent knows firsthand the power of the prairies. Having moved to the Bemidji area in the 1980s he assumed he would spend a lot of time in the Boundary Waters area, but instead he was drawn to the West.
He said, “The Dakotas have a power that just has a real hold over me and it is that singularity and that dominance and the sky is so much larger--you stand in front of it and you're diminished…you become small in the face of their very great forces. I wanted these people to be present. They were standing in front of the setting of nature, but nature was controlling almost everything they were doing.”
Each character in Lone Dog Road has their own beliefs and stories, and Kent was intent on weaving them together and putting them on a path for a larger purpose. He explained, “I have no desire to disparage or minimize anyone's belief. I just think that we need to have a larger embrace and have a larger understanding of mystery, a larger understanding of
God, a larger understanding of faith--and all of the characters participate in this larger understanding in the course of this book.”
Publishing Lone Dog Road
Despite decades of writing, and with 20 books to his name, Kent had some trouble getting a publisher for Lone Dog Road. He wrote on his webpage, “The big publishers ran from it because it has the mark of Cain upon it. A white man writing about Indians.”
Kent reflected on what had changed since his last book had been published (Dancing with the Gods in 2018).
“The editors and publishers, all of whom are based in big cities somewhere, would look at this book and say, ‘Ah, we don't think we want to touch this book. This is a white man writing about Indians. And it's also an old white man. We want young voices. We want people who have a million TikTok followers.’”
Eventually Kent went with New World Library, a publisher he’d worked with before. He said, “They just let me tell the story. And I'm very happy about that and very proud of the book.”
Lone Dog Road is full of rich characters, vivid landscapes and a big journey that develops into a strong sense of purpose. But most importantly, as Kent points out, it is a hopeful story.
“There is so much darkness in us right now, so much anger…I don't like the growing cruelty at the heart of our national character. I don't like the adversarial nature, the anger that's in all of us. I wanted to write a book that was redemptive and so that was the goal: to have the boys’ journey be redeemed at the end. Hopefully people get done and they have a sense of hope as a result of having read the book.”
Kent Nerburn is currently on an author tour for Lone Dog Road. Locally you can catch him at the following events:
· June 3, Red Lake Nation College, 2 pm;
· June 4, Four Pines Bookstore, Bemidji, 6 pm; and
· June 5, Beagle and Wolf Books, Park Rapids, 7 pm.
More information about Kent Nerburn and Lone Dog Road can be found on his website.
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