‘Not done telling the hard story’: Spokane is Reading ‘Perma Red’

“Perma Red” author Debra Magpie Earling knew her Aunt Louise as the woman who ran for miles for help when a rattlesnake bit Earling’s mother, Florence. Dirty Butterfly sent the rattlesnake because Louise refused to marry her son.

“She could command the rattlers to do her bidding. She could talk to rattlers,” Earling said of Dirty Butterfly, who was a prominent medicine woman. “Many of the strangest things in the story, or might seem the strangest elements of ‘Perma Red,’ are actually based on true events.”

In “Perma Red,” Earling reimagined her family’s story, writing, “Dirty Swallow clapped her hands together once. The rattler slid back down the stairs, leaving a belly trail in dust, silent and soon invisible at the edge of the weeds, and Louise knew then that Dirty Swallow had made her decision.”

“Perma Red” is the 2024 Spokane Is Reading book, which culminates in two free readings at the Spokane Valley and Central libraries, and a workshop about ghost stories. After Earling’s trip to Spokane, where she grew up, she’ll venture to San Francisco to receive the American Book Award for “The Lost Journals of Sacajawea,” her 2010 novel.

Set on the Flathead Indian Reservation in the 1940s, “Perma Red” centers on the story of Louise White Elk, trying to survive the clutches of the dangerous men vying for her attention. Louise is based on Earling’s aunt, who died at 23 in 1947. The book deals with the cruelty of Native boarding schools, the exploitive nature of white ranchers and the precarious existence of Indigenous women being treated as if they were disposable, all while tackling themes of identity, love and family. Earling is Bitterroot Salish.

Spokane Is Reading chair Sharma Shields first read “Perma Red,” while working at a university bookstore in Seattle.

“I fell in love with the book from the first sentences, which are so magical and transportive,” said Shields, “Cassandra” author and Spokane Public Library writing education specialist. “The book centered a woman here in the Northwest in a way that was very uncommon for me to read, even as a literature student back then. It’s such an astonishingly powerful book.”

The pull of “Perma Red” was so great, Shields decided to attend University of Montana’s creative writing program, where Earling was teaching. Earling has since retired, and the University of Montana named her professor emeritus in 2021.

When writing “Perma Red,” Earling struggled to depict Louise. She heard stories about her aunt from family all her life. Later, when she went back to the reservation, she talked to white farmers and ranchers in Montana who had known her aunt.

“They said extraordinary things about her, about her character, how strong she was and how funny she was, and how beautiful she was,” Earling said. “And they talked about like – she wasn’t a conventional beauty. She wasn’t somebody that you’d look at and say, ‘Oh, she’s beautiful.’ But there was something about her, she possessed that je ne sais quoi, I guess, that unknown magic that draws people to her.”

Earling’s mother is her first reader, and though her mom appreciates the gifts of her storytelling, her mother kept giving her the same feedback: That’s very nice. But it doesn’t sound like Louise.

“I struggled with the novel initially, because I wanted to keep so closely to what I thought was the truth of the story,” Earling said. “You want to stick to the facts, as if someone’s life is based on facts.”

In 2017, Earling’s last living aunt died. She was a difficult woman, but Earling came to understand her through the lens of what she went through.

“Being in boarding school and being told that she was ignorant and that her people were stupid and that she was worthless,” Earling said. “All of those messages that she received changed her in significant and dramatic ways. I think it made her life impossible in some ways. She couldn’t overcome that.”

Through that lens, Earling wrote a Louise her mother recognized. A tough, powerful woman who had very few good choices, but always carved her own way.

The novel takes on the perspective of Charlie Kicking Woman, a tribal officer fixated on Louise who drags her back to boarding school, while wrestling with his identity, torn between two worlds. This character was an amalgamation of the tribal police officers Earling worked with as a tribal court advocate from 18 to 21.

“I really related to Charlie and his desire to somehow fit in, and his desire to connect with Louise and her strength,” Earling said.

A frequent comment Earling hears about “Perma Red” is how contemporary the story feels for one being set in the 1940s.

“Which is kind of sad, isn’t it? That those kinds of things are still going on,” Earling said, speaking of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women specifically, but also treatment of Native people, highlighting the Montana Senate race, where candidate Tim Sheehy refused to apologize after making degrading comments about Indigenous people. “We have somebody who’s running for office, he refused to apologize for saying that. And I thought, ‘Oh, we’re still at that same place.’”

In speaking about generational trauma, Earling recalled a story her mom told her about her own childhood. Earling’s mother was visiting her grandma, and a Cadillac pulled up. A little girl with blond ringlets wearing a little blue suit gets out of the car and approaches Earling’s mom.

“The parents grabbed her and said, ‘Get away from those dirty Indians. They’re dirty and filthy!’” Earling said. “That never left my mother. How do you fight that? Where you’re being educated and what you’re told in your education is that you’re inferior.”

“I’ve had a lot of Native people tell me, ‘Well, when you tell a hard story, you have to tell the good stories, too,’ ” Earling said. “And I said, ‘I’m not done telling the hard story.’ I think they need to be told.”

The book has had its own journey. The original manuscript burned in a fire. Earling wrote a different ending, much darker than the version that went to print in 2002. The press that published the book went under, and not long after “Perma Red” entered the world, it went out of print. Dog-eared copies were shared lovingly. Readers continued finding “Perma Red.”

“I still see these old, beat-up copies that have been passed around,” Earling said. “I just got back from Salt Lake City, and there was a young woman who had just graduated from the Institute of American Indian Art. And she said, ‘I’ve had this copy for years,’ and it was dog-eared and kind of falling apart and I was going to give her a new book and she said, ‘No, I treasure this book.’ And so, it was really Native people who kept that story going.”

In 2022, “Perma Red” was republished by Milkweed Editions. On March 14, the Atlantic included “Perma Red” on its list of the Great American Novels.

“When I first started taking classes, I took classes with the late, great writer James Welch,” Earling said. “He, and all of my other creative writing professors, talked about the Great American Novel, and the Great American Novel was determined by the Atlantic Monthly. I remember looking at the list and it has Faulkner and Hemingway and Steinbeck and Zora Neale Hurston … when I did hear that it was listed as the Great American Novel, it was truly gratifying, and it was also humbling.”

Earling added another reason the Atlantic might have chosen “Perma Red” for the list: The book has staying power. The book doesn’t fade. A manuscript burned. Taken out of print during its blooming season, and out of print for nearly 20 years. And of course, Earling wouldn’t have even existed to write down these stories if Louise hadn’t saved her mother. Yet, “Perma Red” stays.

Earling wrote of her Aunt Louise’s run, “Her knees felt too weak to support her so she pumped her arms. She ran to catch the water at the end of the road. She ran to save her sister’s life. She ran with the sun so hot in her throat the miles slowed before her. This isn’t the Dark Ages, she could hear Sister Simon saying, people travel from one end of the earth to the other just for vacation. Men are civilized. We have telephones and typewriters. Electric mixers and wash machines. Indoor plumbing. You Indians must understand. We can talk to wild animals until we’re blue in the face, but a bird is never going to tell you how to build a nest. Snakes won’t bite our enemies because we tell them to. I’m here to liberate you from the darkness of superstition.

“Wake up, the sister had told the Indian children when their lips trembled at her ideas, wake up to the world.”