The Round House was originally published in 2012.[1] The novel is set in 1988 and is narrated by thirteen-year-old Joe Coutts as he attempts to avenge his mother after she is brutally raped.[1] Erdrich wrote the novel while diagnosed with cancer, and has stated in interviews that the diagnosis impacted her productivity and passion for writing, though she was still able to write and publish The Round House, as well as a children's book and a new, revised version of her novel The Antelope Wife.[5]
Erdrich was heavily inspired by the works of William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha novels.[6] Because of this, Erdrich's novels, including The Round House, are all primarily set in the same fictional location centered around the people who lived there throughout multiple generations.[2] The Round House, specifically, takes place in the same reservation as one of Erdrich's previous works, Plague of Doves, and the same one that appears in the conclusion to the trilogy, LaRose.[2] However, the significance of this North Dakota reservation, similar to the reservation in Erdrich's Love Medicine series, stems from her own upbringing as an Ojibwe[7] child in North Dakota.[6]
