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Are you asking what became of her life? The paternity was told, unless Mayla lied. She said the baby’s father was the governor. That’s where the money in the baby doll came from. He was trying to buy off Mayla. After Mayla disappeared he tried to adopt the baby.
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<p>Also on page 225 we learn the baby is with Mayla’s parents.
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<p>Thanks Caraid. I was wondering if the paternity of Mayla’s baby was ever publicly disclosed. And what did become of the baby, Tanya. I know the governor was listed as the father, and the doll money came from the governor, but the information was contained in the file that Joe sees only at the end, after Lark’s murder. Linda says while explaining Lark’s motive in the rape of Geraldine and murder of Mayla (pg. 299)
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<p>Then, on pg. 315, immediately before the accident
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<p>Yes, people on the reservation knew, and we readers knew, but in the end it seems that if the governor of South Dakota were named the father of a child he’d fathered, and subsequently tried to adopt her after the child’s mother, a Native American staff member, went missing with a large sum of cash, it would be big news in the political world. But maybe 30 plus years ago, not? </p>
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How did I miss this? Yes, I think there are a lot of loose ends that aren’t going to get tied up - all too much like real life. </p>
<p>The governor never admits he’s adopting his own child, I’m not sure anyone knew he was the one who had impregnated Mayla. When did she stop working for him - there may not have been any easy way for any one to connect the dots. And when did this sort of sex scandal start to become real news? Probably with Gary Hart’s 1988 presidential race, and governor’s surely got away with even more than presidential candidates.</p>
<p>I guess we don’t know for sure if the governor was the father. Why would he want to adopt the baby if it wasn’t his baby? On that thought, why didn’t he get to keep the baby if he was the father? He wouldn’t need to adopt.</p>
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<p>I don’t think he wanted to acknowledge paternity publicly.</p>
<p>That make sense @NJTheatreMOM. I had a whole new story starting to form in my head.</p>
<p>^^^ I know that the Indian Child Welfare Act would come into play: “ICWA was enacted in 1978 because of the high removal rate of Indian children from their traditional homes and essentially from Indian culture as a whole.”</p>
<p>Yeltow discovered he couldn’t just adopt the Native American child. So, consider adoption difficult. Bazil mentions the law in regard to Mayla’s baby and Yeltow (and triggers Geraldine’s meltdown). I read Pigs in Heaven before this book and that’s pretty much the storyline: young Native American child legally adopted but through a judge who didn’t understand that particular law. The tribal council questions the adoption’s validity and may separate child and adoptive mother.</p>
<p>Interesting:</p>
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<p>Thanks Mary for sharing the information about Janklow. Oddly enough I now remember the publicity garnered by his speeding tickets and the death of the motorcyclist involved in an accident with him. Perusing the wires here, I see law suits, unsolved crimes, libel accusations, cover-ups, and denials, and fear. Yikes, I’m convinced now that the paternity file of the fictional Yeltow counterpart in this book was buried as well: as in real life, some mysteries will be left unsolved.</p>
<p>Yikes! Very interesting, Mary.</p>
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<p>Ha, almost everything on that list has a role in The Round House, too.</p>
<p>I think the Yeltow cover-up reinforces the theme of deception that runs throughout the book. Little lies everywhere—Sonja lying to the bankers, the boys lying to Fr. Travis, Grandma Thunder’s tall tales, etc. And, of course, the big lies. Joe says of himself, “I was building lie upon lie and it all came naturally to me as honesty once had” (p. 275). </p>
<p>Even Judge Coutts is not above lying by omission, “I ask myself in this situation, as one sworn to uphold the law in every case, what I would do if I had any information that could lead to the identity of the killer….I’ve decided that I would do nothing. I would offer up no information” (p. 306). </p>
<p>Ironically, it’s Geraldine who does not lie–the one person from whom a lie would be warranted, even encouraged, so as to obtain justice. She tells Joe that she could not commit perjury, “What would happen to my sense of who I am?” But seeing how it all turned out, she adds, “I wish I had lied, Joe!” (p. 276)</p>
<p>As a reader, I felt sort of omniscient, like Zelia “standing at the edge of things, with the truth” (p. 204). I think the adult Joe manages to tell the story in such a way where there is no black and white. The lies are not always good, not always evil…and the reasons for them are almost always complex.</p>
<p>Looking for some loose-ends clarification: Are we supposed to believe that the figure Joe saw out his window was really a ghost? Joe’s father tells him that “sometimes a ghost is a person out of your future. A person dropping back through time, I guess, by mistake” (p. 88). The ending seems to bear this out, as Joe recognizes the police officer at the crash site as his “backyard ghost.” My mind doesn’t really go there, so I’m wondering if there’s an alternate explanation. </p>
<p>I’d say that we are supposed to believe that the figure was really a ghost. Other books by Erdrich have quite a bit more in the way of magical realism than The Round House.</p>
<p>Here is a quote from a review of The Beet Queen:</p>
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<p><a href=“http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/reading-erdrichs-magic-realism/Content?oid=870511”>Reading: Erdrich's Magic Realism - Chicago Reader;
<p>While I generally don’t like books that are “straight fantasy,” I do like literary fiction that has a sprinkling of it. Right now I’m reading David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks, and it is that sort of book.</p>
<p>No alternate explanation. Randall sees the same ghost as he prays for Joe and family in his sweat lodge:
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<p>Thanks NJTM and ignatius. I remembered that Randall had also seen a ghost, but I had forgotten how detailed his description was. The practical side of me still fights the ghost idea, which is funny considering I was raised on tales of the inexplicable and the miraculous. (My sister and I used to fervently pray at night that the Blessed Mother would not appear to us—years of bedtime reading of Saints for Girls had left us with the impression that it was a common occurrence and we just weren’t up for it, LOL.)</p>
<p>In Joe’s vision and also in Randall’s, the ghost’s lips are moving and he is talking, repeating something, but neither one can make out the words. At the end (p. 334), when the ghost manifests itself as the police officer, Joe says: “His lips had moved but the only words I could make out were Let go and I would not.”</p>
<p>Literally, the officer was referring to Cappy’s body, but I have to wonder if that’s a metaphor for something else that Joe will not let go of—perhaps his lingering guilt over Lark’s murder.</p>
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<p>That’s really interesting, Mary. Did you think that if the Blessed Mother appeared to you, it meant you would become a martyr who had to undergo awful experiences?</p>
<p>And I’m curious…were there lots and lots of stories in Saints for Girls…enough for years of bedtime reading?</p>
<p>^ No, we just didn’t want any apparitions in our room. Too unsettling. Also, there was always the possibility of being assigned a task—like going outside and digging a spring like St. Bernadette—and who wants that kind of responsibility? :)</p>
<p>Yes, there were many stories—years worth only because we read them over and over, like fairy tales. We were no more or less religious than anyone else in our Irish-Catholic neighborhood. That’s just the way it was. Books about saints were typical childhood fare, providing just as much entertainment for us as Classics Illustrated or the Oz books. </p>
<p>Some of Louise Erdrich’s comments in The Paris Review article really resonated with me, such as when she talked about the “magical thinking” of childhood, where, thanks to Bible stories, “sticks could change to serpents, a voice might speak from a burning bush, angels wrestled with people.”</p>
<p>I’d forgotten about that vision from Chapter 2, even though I knew at the time it must be forshadowing something. I also hadn’t paid much attention to the ghost. I don’t have a lot of patience for magical realism, and like my fantasy straight much better! That said, I really liked Mooshum’s stories and how they tied in with narrative.</p>
<p>Mooshum had a slightly different take on the ghost – or at least a different terminology:</p>
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<p>I liked Mooshum’s stories, too. I could use a little help interpreting them, though – beyond the fact that Nanapush the good son represents Joe, and the woman who could not be killed is Geraldine.</p>
<p>It was interesting that Mooshum told his stories in his sleep. I guess in rest his mind was clearer.</p>