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SPEAKER 1: Some freezing rain, and then maybe it's mixed with snow in the afternoon. We've got some ice accumulations of about 2/10 of an inch and steady temperatures around the mid-30s Cloudy in the morning on Sunday. 30% chance of snow and highs around 30. Upper 20s on Monday, mid-30s on Tuesday, mid-30s on Wednesday and 30, 32 now.

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STEVEN JOHN: This is MPR News Presents. Today, featuring National Book Award winner, Louise Erdrich, one of Minnesota's most prominent writers gave an interesting talk at Concordia University in St. Paul about her book that won the big prize. It's called The Round House. Louise Erdrich reads from her novel and talks about her passion for writing, for speaking out, and for staying in Minnesota as much as she can after the latest news.

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WINDSOR JOHNSTON: From NPR News in Washington, I'm Windsor Johnston. The process of deciding who will succeed Pope Benedict will begin on Tuesday. The Vatican says the decision was taken during a vote today of the College of Cardinals. The conclave will get under way after a morning mass followed by the first balloting in the afternoon.

The Obama administration is pointing to a better than expected jobs report as a sign, the US economy is gaining traction. NPR's Scott Horsley reports employers added 236,000 jobs last month, while the unemployment rate fell to 7.7%.

SCOTT HORSLEY: Unemployment is now lower than at any time in the Obama presidency. Construction jobs are gaining steam as the housing market recovers, and the business service sector showed strong job growth as well. White House economist, Alan Krueger, says the recovery should continue if Washington policymakers can stay out of the way.

ALAN KRUEGER: I think it's important that we build on this progress, that we don't go on a course which sets up speed bumps for the recovery and that slows us down.

SCOTT HORSLEY: The February jobs report does not reflect the automatic government spending cuts which began last week. Forecasters say those cuts will slow the nation's economic growth. Scott Horsley, NPR News, the White House.

WINDSOR JOHNSTON: Prosecutors say Sulaiman Abu Ghaith has given an extensive statement since his arrest that runs 22 pages. He's a senior Al-Qaeda leader and a son-in-law of Osama bin Laden. NPR's Dina Temple-Raston reports Abu Ghaith appeared in federal court in New York today.

DINA TEMPLE-RASTON: He pleaded not guilty to conspiracy. The justice department had unsealed his indictment last night and just said that there was one charge, this conspiracy to kill Americans. Now, we know that Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, the son-in-law, was a spokesman for Al-Qaeda. He appeared in Al-Qaeda videos. He was sitting right next to his father-in-law, bin Laden, when he took credit for the 9/11 attacks the day after they happened. So basically, he's facing a charge for helping Al-Qaeda and being part of its overall terrorist conspiracy.

WINDSOR JOHNSTON: Abu Ghaith was captured in Jordan over the last week. Kenya's race for the presidency is coming down to the wire today. As NPR's Gregory Warner reports, the closely watched outcome could have major consequences for US relations with Kenya.

GREGORY WARNER: As the last votes are tallied, the leading candidate, Uhuru Kenyatta, leaps and dives around the 50% mark. He needs that clear majority to win or else the contest goes to a runoff election in April. A Kenyatta win could alter Kenya's relationship with the West.

Kenyatta faces charges at the International Criminal Court for his role in instigating some of the violence that followed the country's disputed election in 2007. His trial begins this summer raising the possibility that he would have to rule the country while in detention in The Hague. Kenyatta's opponent has demanded the tally be stopped alleging voter fraud. Gregory Warner, NPR News, Nairobi.

WINDSOR JOHNSTON: On Wall Street, the Dow was up 36 points. This is NPR.

STEVEN JOHN: And you're listening to Minnesota Public Radio News, I'm Steven John. Governor Mark Dayton said today he's all but certain to abandon a proposal to broaden the state's sales tax to cover service transactions.

The expansion was a key revenue element of Dayton's proposed budget, but also one that provoked protests from the business community. The DFL governor said he is standing behind his plan to raise the cigarette tax and income taxes on the wealthy. Dayton plans to detail other revisions to his budget proposal next week.

Legislation to establish a state health insurance exchange will soon head to a House-Senate conference committee. Following earlier passage in the House, the DFL-controlled Senate approved a bill last night to create an online marketplace for health plans. More than a million Minnesotans are projected to use the exchange, a central part of the federal health care overhaul.

During 12 hours of floor debate, Republican critics repeatedly cited the words of Governor Dayton who had called the exchange a gamble on Monday, but yesterday Dayton said he's long advocated for a single payer health system. He said the exchange is a gargantuan undertaking, will have some initial glitches, and may leave people disappointed, at least, at first.

MARK DAYTON: If we can make this work successfully, this hybrid between public and private sector, and take the best of both, I think that's our best chance to have a successful statewide nationwide health care policy. But just mindful of the realities of it.

STEVEN JOHN: If lawmakers fail to pass final legislation by March 31, the federal government will play a much stronger role in running the state's exchange. A 23-year-old man previously suspected in three attacks on women in Georgia has been charged with murder in the death of a Minnesota woman. Alberto Palmer was charged this morning in Anoka County with second-degree murder in the death of 18-year-old Brittany Clardy.

Investigators say Clardy met Palmer after he answered an online ad for massage services in February. A criminal complaint says Palmer told police the two fought after having sex, and he beat her in the head with a hammer. Clardy's body was found February 21 hidden in her mother's car, which had been towed to a Columbia heights impound lot. Palmer was being held on $2 million bail. Partly sunny today. Highs in the 30s. This is MPR News.

SPEAKER 2: Support for this program comes from Hunger-Free Minnesota, which is offering grant awards to close the missing meal gap using its community close-up analysis of food insecurity and missing meals. More grant information at hungerfreemn.org.

STEVEN JOHN: Welcome to MPR News presents, I'm Stephen John. Minnesota author Louise Erdrich won the National Book Award for her latest novel, The Round House. In her story, an Ojibwe woman is assaulted and raped, and her young son and his friend set out to find her attacker. Some critics are calling The Round House a Native American to kill a mockingbird.

Yesterday, President Obama signed the Violence Against Women Act, which Louise Erdrich was vocally supporting. She spoke about that and spoke about her book that earned the National Book Award at an event held at Concordia University in St. Paul. Here's Louise Erdrich.

LOUISE ERDRICH: Most people, really, are introduced to my work through force.

[LAUGHTER]

No, that's how it happens.

[LAUGHTER]

And it seems to go well. No one is-- if people have hated it, they've never come up to me and said, I was forced to read your work, I hate it. Usually, it's people-- I was forced to read your work, but it turned out it wasn't so bad after all, and that's a great thing.

So this book, The Round House is set in 1988. The reason I set it in 1988 was not only to point up a couple of facts about the situation at the time, which hasn't changed to this very day, it's a situation of justice I'll talk about later, but also because that was the first season of Star Trek-- The Next Generation.

And my protagonist Joe has been able to wire a receiver up out of-- he's, kind of, what-- well, now MacGyver does become a verb, right? But in those days MacGyver was-- everybody just watched MacGyver. But they MacGyver this piece up, and they're able to watch the first generation, and it really changes their lives. But you won't hear about this in the beginning because what the story is about, really, is his relationship with his parents, and an event that utterly changes their lives, and his life, and it begins in the beginning of the book.

"Small trees had attacked my parents' house at the foundation. They were just seedlings with one or two rigid healthy leaves. Nevertheless, the stocky shoots had managed to squeeze through knife cracks in the decorative brown shingles covering the cement blocks. They had grown into the unseen wall, and it was difficult to pry them loose. My father wiped his palm across his forehead and damned their toughness.

I was using a rusted old dandelion fork with a splintered handle. He wielded a long, slim iron fireplace poker that was probably doing more harm than good. Whenever I succeeded in working loose a tiny tree, I placed it like a trophy beside me on the narrow sidewalk surrounding the house. I thought it was a wonder the treelets had persisted through North Dakota winter. They'd had water perhaps, but only feeble light and a few crumbs of Earth. Yet, each seed had managed to sink the hasp of a root deep and a probing tendril outward.

My father stood up, stretching his sore back. "That's enough," he said, though he was usually a perfectionist. I was unwilling to stop, however, and after he went into the house to phone my mother who had gone to her office to pick up a file, I continued to pry at the hidden root links. He did not come back out, and I thought he must have lain down for a nap, as he did now sometimes.

You would think, then, that I would have stopped, a 13-year-old boy with better things to do. But on the contrary, as the afternoon passed and everything on the reservation grew quiet and hushed, it seemed increasingly important to me that each of these invaders be removed down to the very tip of the root where all the vital growth was concentrated. And it seemed important, as well, that I do a meticulous job, as opposed to so many of my other shoddily-completed chores. Even now, I wonder at the steepness of my focus.

I had quit at last. I was reading and drinking a glass of cool water in the kitchen when my father came out of his nap and entered, disoriented and yawning. He licked his dry lips and cast about, searching for the smell of food, perhaps, the sound of pots or the clinking of glasses or footsteps. What he said then surprised me, although on the face of it, his words seemed slight.

Where is your mother? His voice was hoarse and dry. I rose and handed him a glass of water. He gulped it down. He didn't say those words again, but the two of us stared at each other in a way that struck me somehow as adult. His look persisted until I dropped my eyes. I'd actually just turned 13. Two weeks ago, I'd been 12.

"At work?" I said, to break his gaze. A tribal enrollment specialist, she had probably mulled over some petition she'd been handed. She was the head of a department of one. It was a Sunday, thus the hush, the Sunday afternoon suspension. Even if she'd gone to her sister Clemence's house to visit afterward, mom would have returned by now to start dinner. We both knew that.

Women don't realize how much store men set on the regularity of their habits. We absorb their comings and goings into our bodies, their rhythms into our bones, our pulse is set to theirs, and as always on a weekend afternoon, we were waiting for my mother to start us ticking away on the evening. And so, you see, her absence stopped time.

"What should we do?" we both said at once, which was, again, upsetting, but, at least, my father seeing me unnerved took charge. "Let's go find her," he said, and even then, as I threw on my jacket, I was glad he was so definite, find her, not just look for her, not search, we would go and find her. "The car's had a flat," he declared. "She probably drove someone home and the car's had a flat. These damn roads. We'll walk down and borrow your uncle's car and go find her." Find her, again.

I strode along beside him. He was quick and still powerful once he got going. He had become a lawyer, then a judge, and also married late in life. I was a surprise to my mother, too. My old Moosham, my grandpa, called me Oops. That was his nickname for me. And unfortunately, others in the family found it funny, so I am still called Oops sometimes to this very day.

We backed down the gravel drive in my uncle's car and drove to the tribal offices. Circled the parking lot. Empty. Windows dark. As we came back out the entrance, we turned right. "She went to hoop dance, I bet," said my father, "needed something for dinner. Maybe she was going to surprise us, Joe." Halfway to hoop dance, it occurred to me that the grocery store was closed on Sunday.

"Of course, it is," my father's chin jutted. His hands tightened on the wheel. He had a profile that would look Indian on a movie poster, Roman on a coin. There was a classic stoicism in his heavy beak and jaw. He kept driving because he said she might have forgotten it was Sunday, too, which was when we passed her. "There," she whizzed by us in the other lane, riveted, driving over the speed limit, anxious to get back home to us.

But here we were. We laughed at her set face as we did a u-turn there in the highway and followed her eating her dust. "She's mad," my father laughed so relieved. "See, I told you. She went to the grocery and forgot it was closed. Mad now she wasted gas. Oh, Geraldine." There was amusement, adoration, amazement in his voice when he said those words, Oh, Geraldine.

From just those two words, it was clear that he was and had always been in love with my mother. He had never stopped being grateful that she had married him and right afterward given him a son when he'd come to believe he was the end of the line. Oh, Geraldine.

He shook his head, smiling as we drove along, and everything was all right, more than all right. We could now admit we'd been worried by my mother's uncharacteristic absence. We could be jolted into a fresh awareness of how we valued the sanctity of small routine. Wild, though, I saw myself in the mirror, in my thoughts. I valued such ordinary pleasures.

So it was our turn, then, to worry her. "Just a little," said my father, "just to let her in for a taste of her own medicine." We took our time bringing the car back to Clemence's house, and we walked up the dirt driveway. Alongside it in a strict row, mom had planted the pansy seedlings she'd grown in paper milk cartons. She'd put them out early. The only flower that could stand a frost.

As we came up the drive, we saw that she was still in the car, sitting in the driver's seat before the blank wall of the garage door. My father started running. I could see it, too, in the set of her body. Something fixed, rigid, wrong. When he got to the car, he opened the driver's side door. Her hands were clenched on the wheel, and she was staring blindly ahead as she had been when we passed her going the opposite way on the road to hoop dance. We'd seen her intense stare, and we'd laughed, then, "She's mad at the wasted gas."

I was just behind my father, careful, even then, to step over the scalped pansy leaves and buds. He put his hands on hers and carefully pried her fingers off the steering wheel. Cradling her elbows, he lifted her from the car and supported her as she shifted toward him still bent in the shape of the car seat. She slumped against him, stared past me.

There was vomit down the front of her dress. And soaking her skirt and soaking the gray cloth of the car seat, her dark blood. "Go down to Clemence," said my father. "Go down there and say I'm taking your mother's straight to hoop dance emergency. Tell them to follow. With one hand, he opened the door to the back seat, and then as though they were dancing in some awful way, he maneuvered mom to the edge of the seat and very slowly laid her back, helped her turn over on her side.

I saw her blink, a little frown. Her face was beginning to swell. I went around to the other side, and I got in with her. I lifted her head and slid my leg underneath. I sat with her holding my arm over her shoulder. She vibrated with a steady shudder like a switch had been flipped inside. A strong smell rose from her, the vomit and something else like gas or kerosene.

"I'll drop you off down there," my father said backing out, the car tires screeching. "No. I'm coming too. I got to hold on to her. We'll call from the hospital." I had almost never challenged my father in word or deed, but it didn't even register between us. There had already been that look, odd, as if between two grown men, and I had not been ready, which didn't matter.

I was holding my mother tightly now in the back seat of the car. Her blood was on me. I reached onto the back window ledge and pulled down an old plaid quilt we kept there. She was shaking so bad I was scared she would fly apart. "Hurry, dad." "All right," he said, and then we flew there. He had the car up past 90. We just flew."

STEVEN JOHN: Minnesota author Louise Erdrich reading the opening chapter of her newest book, The Round House. It won the National Book Award for fiction. This is MPR News Presents. Louise Erdrich spoke recently at Concordia University in St. Paul.

LOUISE ERDRICH: So that's how this book begins. And I guess you have the sense right away that something really shattering has happened to Joe's mom. And what's happened will not be easy to rectify either emotionally or through the justice system. And that's why I took on the subject of this book, which is the difficulty of working on crimes of sexual violence to find a just resolution.

I didn't know how I was going to do it, so that's what I'm going to talk about for a few minutes. And I don't really want to write a political novel that just talks about the politics in the novel, right? If you do that, then you just are not telling a story. So I had to go looking for somebody to tell my story, and Joe is the person I found. And once I found Joe, well, the story began to really write itself.

And I have to say now that I finished this book, and I did the thing that writers do, I went around and read from it. And every time I do read from it, I miss Joe a little more. I really felt this immense connection to him, not just as a character, but as a person. And I don't think I'll ever get him back at a different age or anything like that because I think this is it, but it was one of the most surprising gifts of my life to have this character come and tell me the story.

And I still have the first pages I wrote because I wrote the first few pages almost straight out. I was actually digging in under the foundation of my parents' house with my father in North Dakota, and I was pulling out these little rooted trees. And my father is 87, my mother is in her late 70s. And it struck me as so painful and so joyous at the same time because I have been privileged and lucky to have my parents, but it's hard for them to age. It's hard for me to be there to see them age.

And it struck me that these roots, these trees-- I love trees, but they were tearing up the foundation of my parents' house. That was the sign of their vulnerability to me. And I didn't understand that, but as I drove back-- I was driving on 94, my parents live in Walton as I drove back down 94, I think I was near-- I wasn't quite to Alexandria, I just pulled off the road because all of a sudden, I heard Joe.

I heard this person talking to me and telling me about who he was and how he had done the same thing. And when I got to the part where he asked-- where his father asked, where is your mother, then I just knew the whole book. You can see why that was such a gift. Now I'm just working every day wishing that some glorious character would come back to me, and I had done the same thing for months and months before Joe, so I'm hoping another character will come. But to have a book that's actually told to you in such a powerful way as this one was is a very rare experience.

But the reason I wanted to write it in the first place was because I came across this shocking statistic that three of four Native American women suffer rape or another crime of sexual violence, and that almost none of those that occur on reservation land can be prosecuted. They can be, but they aren't. And in many cases as in this case, there are reasons why they are not able to be prosecuted, so I wanted to write about that. And as it happens, I'm going to ask you for a couple of things next.

I don't really feel like it's any use for me to go out and just read my work without really telling you what's in my heart anymore because I just see the world as this fantastic place with glorious ups and downs and inequalities. It just so happens that this book came out just at the time when the very issue in here is being addressed in the US Congress. So I'm going to ask you to write down VAWA, Violence Against Women Act. And I'm just going to tell you in a few sentences what is going on with that.

This is a really helpful act that has helped women who suffer any crime of sexual violence by protecting them basically. And it also has in it protections for Native women. This is tremendously important. It's been there since the Clinton era. It has some special language in it that would protect minority women and especially protect Native women because most Native women can-- on reservations, non-Native criminals cannot be prosecuted. So it gives some limited ability for courts on reservations to bring perpetrators of sexual violence to justice. All right. So that's one thing.

The other thing, I told you that I don't know why there is a reason to go out unless I'm really telling you what's going on in the biggest way with me. It's freezing out, right? So it's almost impossible to believe what's really happening to our climate. And I'm just going to give five-- please give me five minutes because I'm going to ask you to type in .350.org, 350.org.

And the reason I'm asking you is because I think it's the best hope we've got educating ourselves on what's really happening to our climate in our world. We've lost half of our polar ice. In spite of the wonderful cold we've got, our planet is warming up. It's already warmed up 1 degree. And the reason I'm telling you, especially young people who are here at college is because I want you to have a world.

It's not something that is going to happen to our grandchildren. I see a lot of people my age here, too, it's going to happen to us. If we live 20 more years, we're going to see some pain. The climate warming up isn't like the fluctuations that we see, 6 degrees, 7 degrees, 20 degrees.

What it is is it's like a body having a fever. And when our fever goes up a degree, we feel it, when it goes up 2 degrees, we stay home, when it goes up 4, 5, 6 degrees, when it goes up to 105 degrees, which is what would happen if all of the fossil fuels we've got in the ground were taken out and burned 6 degrees, that's death.

And I go out every day, and I say, what can I do? What can I do to try and change it. And sometimes it seems so big and I feel so small, but I just saw a person back there who is not drinking out of a plastic bottle. He just took a bottle out, like, a metal bottle, that's one thing. Just do whatever you can. But please look up 350.org because you'll find out incredible things are happening, and you can be part of them. All right, thank you. That's it. Thanks for listening to that.

Now I'm going to read the part that my daughter said I have to read to you because I have never read it before and she likes it because it's about Joe and his best friends. I told you that there are a bunch of Star Trek, future generation, that's their world, and they talk in that language, and they love it so. They're not old enough for cars, of course, so they either sneak their aunts' ponies or they drive bikes all over.

And one day what these guys do is-- Angus, Zack, Joe, and Joe's best friend Cappy. Cappy's is, kind of, a-- he's a budding hunk, and Joe is not quite there yet. And Cappy's got the hair that goes down over his eye a little bit. And you remember-- I don't know, there's still-- I don't know. It's come back, though, tossing your head back. Being a guy and tossing your hair back out of your eyes, it's just so cool, and that's what Cappy does.

And Cappy, well-- these guys find themselves going to a swimming place. And it's on the church ground, they get into a situation where they threw their clothes up, they're skinny-dipping, and then they look over and they see, oh my gosh, the priest has a whole-- the God squad is meeting. All the kids on the reservation and all the missionary kids who have come to the reservation to help out the Indians have come on to meet, and these guys are romping around naked in the lake, oh no, they're-- he is, I don't know what to do.

Well, Cappy takes that opportunity to see that there is an absolutely gorgeous young woman there, and he being the budding hunk stands in the water and then when he is chastised by the priest, he just walks out. And there's a look that this girl is frozen, but also it's like a Doe in the headlights sort of moment where Joe just looks and goes, she didn't look away. And he says this as much to say as they're in love. So Zelia and Cappy have this thing going and the other boys are just as jealous as you can be, but then Zelia has to leave and Cappy is left behind.

"My best friend Cappy's dad, Doe, had built a little deck on the front of the house, and it was filled with useful junk. There was snow tires, and black garbage bag, rusted jacks, a bent hibachi grill, banged up tools, and plastic toys. Cappy slumped amid all that jetsam in a sagging lawn chair. He was running his hands over and over his hair as he stared at the dog-scratched boards. He didn't even look up when I stepped next to him and sat down on an old picnic bench.

"Hey," Cappy didn't react. So, "Hey," still nothing. After a lot more nothing, it came out that his first love, his great love, Zelia, had gone back to Helena with the church group. Which I already knew and after still more nothing, Cappy blurted out, "Me and Zelia, we did something." "Something?" "We did everything." "Everything?" "Well, everything we could think of. Well, there might be more, but we tried. "Where?" "In the graveyard.

It was the night of your grandpa's birthday, and once we did a few things there--" "on a grave?" "Oh, I don't know. We were on the outskirts of the graves off to the side. We didn't do anything right on a grave." "That's good," I said. "It could be bad luck." "Oh, for sure. Then after we got into the church basement, and we did it a couple of more times there." "What?" "Well, down in the Catechism room there's a rug."

I was silent. My head swam. "Bold move," I said at last. "Yeah. Then she left. I can't do nothing. I hurt," Cappy looked at me like a dying dog. He tapped his chest and whispered, "It hurts right here." "Women," I said, he looked at me, "they'll kill you." "How do you know?" Well, I didn't answer. His love for Zelia was not like my love for my Aunt Sonja which had become a thing contaminated by humiliation, treachery, and even bigger waves of feeling that tore me up and threw me down.

By contrast, Cappy's love was pure. His love was just starting to manifest. Uncle Elwin had a tattoo gun and traded for his work, and Cappy said he wanted to go and get Elwin to etch Zelia's name in bold letters across his chest. "No," I said, come on. Don't do that." He stood, "I'm going to." I only convinced him to wait by telling him that when his pecs swelled from his workouts, the letters could be bigger.

[LAUGHTER]

We sat a long time, me trying to distract Cappy, that not working. I finally left when Doe came home and told Cappy to go work on the woodpile. Cappy walked over to the ax, grabbed it, and began splitting wood with such crazed thwacks I feared he'd take off his leg. I told him to take it easy, but he just gave me a dead look and hit a piece of wood so hard it shot up 10 feet.

I was desperate to distract Cappy, so the two of us were trying to break ourselves on the bike course. We rode on a construction site. And he chopped every piece of wood in his yard and reduced length after length to kindling, but still this was not enough, and he wanted to go out, and after the bike, ride Sonja's ponies, and in this state of mind, I thought he'd ride those ponies to death.

So I was desperate. After we cruised around, when we paused or wiped out, Cappy folded his hand on his heart and something crackled. I finally asked him what it was. "It's a letter from her. And I wrote one "back, he said. We were breathing hard. We'd raced. He pulled out her letter, waved it at me, and then carefully folded it back into its ripped envelope.

Zelia had that cute round writing that all high school girls had with little O's to dot the eyes. Cappy waved another envelope, sealed, with her name and address on it. "I need to get a stamp," he said. So we biked down to the post office. And after he mailed his letter, we got back on our bikes and rode over to find Angus. But he said he couldn't hang out because his aunt was making him go to confession, so we went to the church.

Now, I had assumed that while Angus went inside the church-- me and Cappy didn't go to church, and when he made his confession, Cappy and I would wait outside under the pine tree where there was a bench or down at the playground. Though he didn't have a cigarette to smoke. But Cappy put his bike into the bike rack alongside Angus's, so I parked mine, too. "Hey," I said, "are you going inside?" Cappy was already halfway up the steps and Angus said, "No, you guys can wait outside. Don't matter."

"I'm going to confession," said Cappy. "Zelia, she converted me." "What? Well, were you even baptized?" Angus stopped. "Well, yeah," Cappy kept on going, "Of course, I was." "Oh," said Angus. "Were you confirmed then?" "Yeah," said Cappy. "When was your last confession?" Angus asked. "What's it to you?" said Cappy. "I mean, father will ask you. Father is tough." "I'll tell him." Angus glanced at me.

Cappy seemed dead serious. His face was set in an expression I'd never seen before, or to be more accurate, his expression and the look in his eyes kept shifting between despair and anger and some gentle moony rapture. I was so disturbed by what I feared he would confess, that I grabbed him by the shoulders and I spoke into his face, "You can't do this, man."

Cappy terrified me then. He hugged me. When he stood back, I could tell that Angus was even more dismayed. "Look, I think I got the time wrong," he said. "Come on, Cappy. Let's go swim." "No, no. You've got the time right," said Cappy. He touched our shoulders, "Let's go in."

The church was nearly empty inside. There were a few people waiting for the confessional and a few up front praying at the feet of the Blessed Virgin, where there was a rack of votive candles flickering in red glass cups. Cappy and Angus slid in the back pew where they knelt hunched over. Angus was closest to the confessional. He looked sideways at me over Cappy's bent head, made a rolling-eyed grimace, and jerked his head at the church door as if to say, "Get him out of here."

After Angus went into the confessional and closed the velvet drape after him, he poked his head out and made that face again. I squeezed close to Cappy and said, "Oh, cousin. Oh, cousin. Please, I beg you. Let's get the hell out of here." But Cappy had his eyes closed, and if he heard me, he made no sign. "Brother," I said, "this is no ordinary priest. He's a former Marine."

[LAUGHTER]

"Yeah. Yeah, I know" said Cappy. When Angus emerged, Cappy rose like a sleepwalker, stepped into the confessional, and shut the curtain behind him. There were arcane sounds, a slide of the priest's windows, the whispering back and forth, then the explosion. Father Travis burst from the wooden door of the confessional, and he would have caught Cappy if he hadn't rolled from under the curtain and half crawled and scrambled to the pew.

Father ran back, blocking the exit, but already Cappy had sprung past us, hurtling the pews to the front of the church, landing on the seats with each bound in a breathtaking series of vaulting leaps that took him nearly to the altar. Father Travis's big face had gone white, and each red-brown freckle stood out as if it had been drawn on with a sharp pencil. His neck enlarged. He didn't lock the doors behind him, he advanced on Cappy-- a mistake.

He didn't count on Cappy's speed or on Cappy's practice at evading his older brother in a confined space. So for all Father Travis's military training, he made several tactical errors going after Cappy. It looked like Father Travis could just walk down the center of the church and easily trap Cappy behind the altar, and Cappy played into that.

He acted confused, and he let Father Travis stride toward the front before he bolted to the side aisle and pretended to trip, which caused Father Travis to make a right-hand turn toward him down one of the pews. Once the priest was halfway along the pew, Cappy flipped down the kneeler and sped toward the open door where we were standing alongside two awestruck old men.

Father Travis still could have cut him off if he'd run straight back, but he tried to get past the kneeler and ended up lunging along the stations of the cross. Cappy exited. Father Travis had the longer stride and gain but, instead of running down the steps, Cappy, well-practiced as we all were at sliding down the iron pole banister, used that and gained impetus, a graceful push-off that sent him pell-mell down the dirt road with Father Travis too close behind him to even grab his bike.

Cappy had good shoes, but so, I noticed, did Father Travis. He wasn't running in sober clerical blacks, but had perhaps been playing basketball or jogging before he dropped in to hear confessions. The two sprinted hotly down the dusty gravel that led from the church into town. Cappy boldly crossed the highway, and Father Travis followed. Cappy cut through yards he knew well and disappeared, but even in his cassock which he'd hoisted up and tucked into his belt, Father Travis was right behind him heading toward the dead custard bar and Whitey's gas station.

We marveled at Father's pale, thick-muscled calves blurring in the sun. "What should we do?" "Stay ready," I said. Angus and I took our bikes from the rack and held Cappy's between us. We hoped he'd gain enough on Father Travis so he could jump on and we could pedal away. We watched the bit of road we could see far over the trees because it was there Cappy would appear if Father Travis didn't catch him.

Soon, Cappy popped across. A moment later, Father Travis. Then they vanished and Angus said, "He's trying to lose him zigzagging through the BIA housing. He knows those yards, too." We turned to watch the next patch of road where they were appearing. Again, it was Cappy first, Father Travis not far behind. Cappy knew the front and back entrances of every building and fled in and out of the hospital, the grocery, the senior citizens, the tiny casino we had back then. He doubled back through the Dead Cluster and in and out of Whitey's.

Cappy hopscotched downhill through the graveyard, and then made it through. And then we saw the two of them make a loop that took them through the playground. It was mesmerizing. Cappy set the swings going and sprang through the monkey bars, lightly touching down. Father Travis landed like an ape with his knuckles on the ground, but kept going. They sprinted uphill, two tiny ciphers who now enlarged as Cappy ran toward us ready to jump on the bike we held ready, and speed off.

We would have made it. He would have made it. He came so close. Father Travis put on a burst of speed that brought him within a hand's breadth of Cappy's shirt collar. Cappy floated out from under that hand, but it came down and grabbed his back wheel. Cappy jumped off the bike, but Father Travis, purple in the face, wheezing, had him by the shoulders and bodily lifted him.

Angus and I had dropped our bikes to plead his case, although we couldn't have known for sure what Cappy planned to confess. It was now obvious, everything. "Father, this does not look good," said Angus. "Let him down please," Father Travis. I tried to imagine my father. I tried to imagine a judge's voice in this situation. "Cappy is a minor," I said.

[LAUGHTER]

Perhaps it was absurd, but Father Travis had hold of Cappy's shirt now and had raised his fist, and his fist stopped in the air. "A minor," I said, "who came to you for help."

[LAUGHTER]

A wharf-like raw seized Father Travis, and he threw Cappy on the ground. His foot went back, but Cappy rolled out of range. We picked up our bikes because Father Travis wasn't moving now. He was standing there, breathing in deep gasps, head lowered glaring from under his brow. We knew we'd gotten the upper moral ground in that moment, and we got on our bikes. "Good day, Father," said Angus. Father Travis stared past us into a dark distance as we rode away."

[APPLAUSE]

STEVEN JOHN: Minnesota author Louise Erdrich reading from her newest book, The Round House. It won the National Book Award for fiction. She spoke recently at Concordia University in St. Paul. Earlier in her talk she spoke about the Violence Against Women Act. President Obama signed the measure into law yesterday. We'll have the question and answer session in just a moment.

SPEAKER 3: Programming is supported by Parent Aware Ratings. Because up to 90% of brain development happens before age 5, parents use Parent Aware Ratings to find child care using kindergarten-readiness best practices, parentawareratings.org.

STEVEN JOHN: Let's get back now to NPR News Presents for this Friday. And today's featured speaker, Minnesota author Louise Erdrich, her latest book, The Round House won the National Book Award. She spoke recently at Concordia University in St. Paul and answered questions from the audience.

AUDIENCE: I wonder if you could talk a little bit about your use of language. We have a 13-year-old boy who, in many ways, seems 13, not always in touch with the emotions, riding bikes, and on the other hand, he uses language already at the opening of the book, had lain, meticulous, some of the language that I don't ever hear in my 13-year-old son, say. So I wonder if you might talk about why you chose that and what effect you were hoping to achieve through that?

LOUISE ERDRICH: Well, as you read the book, you realize I cheated. I had the best of both worlds. He's looking back at himself at 13. So he can look back, but every so often, I get lost in his world. Like, his conversation with Cappy, that's-- I have the great joy of being around a lot of kids in my life, and that's pretty much the way they would talk.

But also he goes into longer explanations and descriptions and has a very much more sophisticated grasp of the emotions involved and of the narrative involved because he's in his late 30s when he's writing this book. It's just a narrative. There's a device. Yeah. So I can have both. Yes.

AUDIENCE: What effect has winning the National Book Award had on your career and the readers around the country? Are there more readers, more books being sold in other parts of the country? And your schedule, do you now have to appear all over the country, also?

LOUISE ERDRICH: Well, I came home afterwards, and I had been nominated for this award. So I was really used to not getting it, and I just didn't-- I didn't know whether it would make any difference. And I think it has made a difference in gathering readers to the books. That's been wonderful, especially for this particular book.

This is the first time I've done something that-- actually, I mean, it really is almost a manipulative thing as a writer. I thought, I want to get this message across, but I'll only do it maybe if I make it a suspense novel. And I did that. I really enjoyed making it a suspense book. A book that-- I wanted to make a book where you couldn't put it down once you started it. You wanted to know what happened.

And then I would stuff in the jurisdictional legal issues like spinach, the sandwich or something. So I think it's gained more readers. But I haven't-- I have a-- I really treasure my privacy, my family life, and so I have not accepted any speaking engagements except the ones I already had. I'm not going anywhere if I can help it. I just want to stay here.

AUDIENCE: I wonder, have you done any readings in Native communities, and how has the book been received there?

LOUISE ERDRICH: I do, and I also-- my sister and I are part of a writing workshop in our home reservation. So yeah, I, in fact, make a point of trying to bring the book into native communities. But the way that-- the most obvious way of doing that is by having the bookstore, which is a native-focused bookstore and so brings a lot of people in.

One of the most moving things that's happened to me is that I've heard from people who've dealt with this exact issue. And that's one of the speaking engagements I actually do, will accept is there are some people who are working so hard just to keep women safe, and they have needed support.

And I'm just moved that this book has given some people a feeling that they're not alone, and that there's a story that tells their story. I've had a number of people who have written to me through the bookstore, and that's been terrific. I'm sorry it's out there, but it is out there. It's a hard story, and it's a true story. Yeah.

AUDIENCE: What made writing your thing, like, your passion?

LOUISE ERDRICH: What made writing my thing? That is the best question. What made it my passion? Well, I really tried other avenues first. I did a lot of other jobs. I did all kinds of other jobs in my life.

I sold Kentucky Fried Chicken. I was a lifeguard. I worked on construction. I hoed in sugar beet fields. I was a field worker. I waitressed a whole lot at all kinds of diners. And then I worked on newspapers, and then I started writing textbooks, and then all of a sudden, I thought maybe I can write a story because these jobs are incredibly hard.

And it's not like I don't mind hard work, but I wanted something that I really couldn't wait to get. I wanted a passion, exactly what you said. So once I started writing, I was like, I love doing this. It just gripped me, and I loved-- I started as a poet, I loved language, I loved words, I loved telling a story. And after that, I just almost got to the point where I just couldn't be happy unless I was writing. And that's how it happened. It's like I just love doing what I do. I feel lucky.

AUDIENCE: In your writing process, you mentioned the part about the trees was something from your own life. And I've noticed, in your books, what's so intriguing to me is there is something that's very honest and real about them. Is that something-- do you strive to incorporate pieces of your own life in your writing? Is it something that just happens? Do you use it to fill in the details? I know that works a lot of different ways for a lot of different writers, and how does that work for you?

LOUISE ERDRICH: Well, I think that you have to use pieces of your life. But they're transformed, and, of course, I'm not a 13-year-old boy. So having a 13-year-old boy help us, that is a lot different. But yet, there's a lot in here that is experience. I mean, I had to watch the first two seasons of Star Trek-- Next Generation.

I even began drawing Worf the way kids would draw him. I mean, you have to do things that will get you closer to your characters. I was raised a Catholic, and I knew-- I based this former Marine priest on someone-- actually, I really like this person, and he's one of the most complex and likeable members of the Catholic Church I've ever written about.

So yeah, this-- although, actually, he's not-- the guy isn't really a priest that I wrote-- I mean, that I based it on. But I don't usually write about things that happen to other people so much as things that happen to me in my own life. And then I also hear-- I hear stories, I read stories, I read a lot of small town newspaper. I just find them wonderful, fascinating.

[APPLAUSE]

Thank you. Thanks very much.

STEVEN JOHN: Minnesota author Louise Erdrich speaking at Concordia University in Saint Paul about her newest book, The Round House. It won the National Book Award. Louise Erdrich will be speaking March 21 at Concordia college in Moorhead at an event with National Public Radio's Lynn Neary.

If you want to hear this talk over the noon hour again or find out about Louise Erdrich's next talk in Moorhead, you can go to our website at mprnews.org, and click on MPR News Presents on the programs menu. That's our show for today. Is red wine the secret antidote to aging? Stay tuned for Science Friday.

TOM CRANN: Later on All Things Considered, Minnesota is home to two top snowmobile manufacturers, and many of the machine's best racers. We'll spend some training time with Tucker Hibbert, a man with six Snocross gold medals. I'm Tom Crann. That and all the day's news, join me starting at 3:00.

STEVEN JOHN: It is now a minute before 1:00 at Minnesota Public Radio News, 91.1 K-N-O-W Minneapolis, St. Paul. Listen live with our free mobile apps available for Android and iPhone. 32 degrees in the Twin Cities. Partly cloudy afternoon in store. Temperatures topping out in the mid-30s for the metro. Southeast winds at 5 to 10 miles an hour. Not exactly a hockey tournament blizzard in the offing, but we do see some precipitation moving in overnight.

It will likely be a mixture of rain and snow and freezing rain. There could be some light snow and ice accumulation, so be aware if you're traveling tonight. Lows in the lower 30s, and then temperatures only in the mid-30s tomorrow, too. I say only because we're not going to see much change from our current reading of 32 degrees over the next 24 hours, and that will really have an impact on whether the precipitation we get comes down in the form of rain or freezing rain or snow. So be prepared. It's now 1:00 o'clock.