The Round House Summary

Joe Coutts In this novel, “The Round House” one of the main characters, Joe Coutts is a young thirteen year old boy who is forced to grow up sooner than he thought. His mother, Geraldine, is raped and beaten near the Round House and refuses to talk about what happened and tell who attacked her. Being that Geraldine was a tribal enrollment specialist, which could be considered something like a social worker in today’s time, it was very difficult and perplexing to narrow down who might have did such a thing to Geraldine. She knew everyone’s business or “everyone’s secret” as Joe would say, throughout the tribe. Whatever went on, she knew. Nothing ever got past her. Being such a young boy, Joe was saddened by what had happened to his mother, especially being that she was not herself at all. Joe was determined to find out who had attacked his mother and to get justice. Joe and his father, Bazil, whom was a tribal judge knew they had to do whatever it took to track down Geraldine’s attacker. Being that Bazil was a judge, he figured he would use the legal system to track down the attacker. Unfortunately, he was unsuccessful due to a loophole in the system. Bazil begins reviewing some of Geraldine recent cases for the Ojibwe people. Bazil also reviewed and looked over some of his documents from his previous

Just like Coalhouse Walker Jr., Joe is a man of his word. If he says he is going to do something, he is going to do it. He told his mother that he was going to kill whoever raped her, and he did just that. Everyone has a strong relationship with someone, and Joe’s just so happen to be with his mother. If you truly love and care about someone, you sometimes have to take risks to show that you really care. God sometimes throw things our way just to see how we react to it; testing us. In Joe’s situation, God may have been testing him. Did he pass the