A poor adaptation of Atonement-meets-Brokeback-Mountain. Some of the major events are telegraphed so far in advance that you feel no surprise at any of the shocking plot twists whatsoever. The story itself is somewhat interesting, but it's not well handled. Further, the character of Prudence is badly developed, which makes her constant sexualization both troubling and suspicious, especially because the men are treated in a way that makes them "helpless" to her wiles and passive in her wake. ( )

Set in Minnesota, "Prudence" is a story beginning and ending with a young Native American orphan girl. This framework surrounds the stories of several men of various races, sexual orientations, and educational and vocational backgrounds. The author manages to pack incredible character studies into a short 200 pages. The writing style is a bit disorienting, but his use of both first and third person narrators seems to fit the story being told. The setting is world war II, the story is inter-racial relationships, but bottom line it's about love, despair, and growing up without guidance. It's not a happily ever after story, but neither is it so dark and dreary that the reader loses hope. I found it a quick and engrossing read leaving more positive than negative reactions than I expected from the publisher's blurb and other reviewers. ( )

Ok, I really didn't care this book...so I tried to figure out what was going on with David Treuer to have written it, and found this amazing, clear headed review about his intentions:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/ct-prj-prudence-david-treuer-2015...

Everything Treuer said in this interview points to his empathy for the helpless and the victimized. But how could this particular novel have been the result of these very moral, very good intentions? The novel felt labored, as if the author tried a lot of scenes and then discarded them. I'm left with the feeling that there should be a scene or a coherence instead of an empty space between disconnected threads of stories. Also the motivations and actions of characters are obscured and at times so ugly that it's difficult to reach past them into any kind of redemption or purpose. For example there are a couple of blame-the-child-for-her-own-rape scenes, or at least that is how I responded to them--third person limited and first person points of view, both used here, don't allow at all times for a reader to distinguish between a character's awfulness and the author's own possible exploitation of shock themes. Another fault I found is that the characters don't act in psychologically valid ways--instead, they feel empty of all but an archetypal validity. Several times I thought: 'now why did this character do that?' and could not find a reasonable answer.

After settling into my feelings about the book for a couple of days I've come back to give it three stars instead of one because one scene saved the book for me, a scene of great tension, great love, and much redemption near the end of the book. It's a story where three extremely minor characters come to the fore and interact in a very surprising way, a set piece all of its own that would have made a great short story.

I guess I'm trying to say that it could have been better. I would love the author to have stuck very close to a fictionalized story of the woman of whom Ernest Hemingway said: "The first woman I ever pleasured was a half-breed Ojibwe girl named Prudence Bolton." The ugliness of this sentence was a major motivation for Treuer to write his novel, but his character named Prudence and her story felt buried under a lot of sludge and her significance obscured by many other themes and unpleasantnesses.
( )

This story takes place in Minnesota, which interested me since that's where I live. It started off promisingly, but by the end of the book I was somewhat disappointed. I'm not totally sure why the book was entitled "Prudence" since she plays a small role until the very end. She then takes a major role and the people we were introduced to earlier are dealt with summarily - it just didn't fall into place very well, unfortunately, and it left me unsatisfied. ( )

Overall the book was good. There were some parts that were difficult to follow as there were parts that seemed disjointed. I had read a review that talked about WWII, race relationships, homophobia etc. The author touches on these but it never seemed to relate as well to the storyline. The character Prudence didn't seem to have as strong of a role in the story as would have been expected since that is the title of the book, until the very end of the book. The ending did catch me by surprise. ( )