The Mighty Red

Kismet, along with Crystal, is another of the novel’s protagonists. She is characterized in part by her keen intelligence and intellectual ability. She is bookish and introverted and at the novel’s beginning is in the process of applying to college. She enjoys schoolwork and, like Hugo, is gifted in multiple academic areas, but her interest in math and science leads her to a STEM field. Her intelligence does not help her to fit in at school; although many are turned off by her dramatic makeup and ripped clothing, she comments that “[t]hings got really difficult only when she started being openly smart” (27). She is aware that her intelligence is more of a problem for her classmates than her appearance and that knowledge drives her even further away from her peers.

Kismet is also characterized by her indecision. The scene during which she allows herself to be (albeit temporarily) borne away by the Red River’s rushing spring waters represents her general inability to make life decisions or speak her mind. She allows herself to become engaged to Gary, panics when her college acceptance letters arrive, and once married cannot quite figure out how to leave her husband. She does not truly find her voice or the motivation to make her own choices until the end of the novel, after her mother has “rescued” her from the Geists by insisting that she leave. That she and Hugo remain in a lifelong relationship, but on their own terms, can be read as one of her only true acts of will: They choose what their relationship will look like rather than allow it to be defined by convention.

Kismet is additionally characterized by the role she plays in various relationships and in the wisdom that she provides about the nature of parental love. Her romantic entanglements are fraught. She stays with Gary out of a vague sense of attraction and inertia. She has a passionate affair with Hugo even though she worries that he is too young and “nerdy” to be an attractive partner. She also observes the dysfunction in her parents’ marriage, and in part through self-reflection (but also by reading Madame Bovary) she concludes that romantic love is, perhaps, more problematic than parental and familial love. This is one of the novel’s core concepts and it is important that Kismet voices it.

Martin is Crystal’s husband, although she does admit at one point that the two were never legally married. He is an unsuccessful actor who is characterized in part by his inability to obtain and hold onto a paying job. Crystal explains that “[o]fficially he was a traveling theater arts teacher all through southeast North Dakota. Unofficially he was a failed actor and pretty much a volunteer” (45). His character contrasts with Crystal’s: They have opposing orientations toward work and career, and his refusal to contribute to the household’s finances stands in stark opposition to Crystal’s work ethic. Martin’s lack of money and a career are only part of his fraught relationship with Crystal. The two are ill-suited to each other and each privately reflects that their marriage has not been happy for some time. Their relationship is another moment in which the novel critiques normative understandings of love and suggests that romantic attachments are not always the way toward happiness. Martin’s loss of the church’s investments is another key aspect of his characterization, and in this regard, he speaks to the novel’s broader interest in the impact of financial policy on working- and middle-class Americans: He, like so many other individuals, was caught up in the financial crash of 2008 and, as Crystal repeatedly notes, it was the banks not people who were bailed out.

Gary is Kismet’s love interest and short-term husband. Like all of the novel’s characters, he is multi-faceted and can be contradictory. Capable of making terrible decisions and mistreating those around him, he is also not entirely antagonistic and should be read as a complex figure. He is not always kind, and yet he does love animals. He comes from a family of hunters but “[h]e didn’t hunt. He loved animals, not only deer but every animal” (13). He shows more compassion toward his mother’s dogs than she does, and at multiple points in the novel commits small acts of kindness toward them.

Although the truth about the night of the accident is revealed late in the novel, Gary should be read as mired in guilt about the events of that night. He caused the death of two of his closest friends and is unable to confront that fact for much of the narrative. Yet that guilt drives many of his actions, including his marriage to Kismet. He is drawn to her in part because he exoticizes her Indigenous identity, but also because in her presence he feels the only calm he has experienced since the accident. He is effectively emotionally using Kismet and does not seem to care about her ambivalence toward him. In this regard, he is selfish, but his selfishness is rooted in unprocessed trauma and guilt rather than in a true lack of empathy.

Gary further reveals his complexity at the end of the novel when he reveals his plans for his family’s farm. He would like to move away from the monoculture of beets and grow organic vegetables. He is moved by the Pavlecky family’s interest in returning the land to its pre-agricultural state, and thus represents a new generation of Red River Valley resident. That the scion of the Geist family would choose to stop the widespread use of pesticides and participate in land reclamation projects speaks to the possibility that the American agricultural sector can begin to undo some of the environmental damage it has caused in rural communities like Tabor all over the United States.

Winnie and Diz are Gary’s parents. Winnie is characterized in part by the guilt she feels after the snowmobiling accident Gary caused. She is mired in grief, has stopped cleaning her home, and feels markedly uncomfortable in town. She is not well-liked by her peers, in part due to Eric’s role in the accident, but in part due to the Geists’ wealth and their dominant role in the region’s agricultural sector. Yet Winnie is a complex character whose privilege comes with marriage rather than birth. Her own family’s farm was lost due to Reagan-era financial policies, and she is an important moment of engagement with themes related to economics and finance, particularly as they impact individuals and small communities. She married Diz, the son of the man who profited from her family’s loss, because “[s]he’d always loved Diz as much as she’d hated his father” (85). Their love is depicted as sincere, as is her love for her son Gary, although in that regard she is a more problematic figure. Because she senses that he feels calmer around Kismet, she does her best to engineer their marriage and then exerts a controlling force on Kismet when they are married, essentially holding her captive in the house. Diz is shown almost entirely through his work as a sugar beet farmer. His massive, conglomerate farm is one of the valley’s biggest polluters, and his unwillingness to stop using harmful pesticides speaks to the damaging role that industrial agriculture and mono-crop farming have played in the Red River Valley during the 20th century. However, there is no true antagonist in this novel, and Diz does have positive attributes. He is markedly empathetic. He is kind to Kismet and although he will not disobey his wife by loaning her his car, he does provide her with the tractor to drive to town.

Hugo is one of Kismet’s love interests. Hugo is Kismet’s former classmate. Although a dedicated student, he now studies at home both on his own and with his mother Bev. Hugo is described as both “smart” and “brilliant,” and his largely self-directed education evidences that. He is an avid reader who has a wide body of knowledge about literature, but he is also gifted in STEM fields and becomes a largely self-taught engineer. Hugo is the mouthpiece for some of the novel’s weightiest topics, including the damaging role that sugar plays both to the environment and to human health. This awareness of the interconnection between environmental damage and public health crises is important to the novel’s thematic project, and of the book’s entire cast of characters, Hugo is the most aware of it. Despite his intelligence (indeed because of it), Hugo is also a social outcast. Like Kismet, he is ill-at-ease in social settings and does not fit into their school’s social scene. The two bond over this shared trait, and it becomes a source of understanding for them both. Hugo is also characterized by his deep and sincere love for Kismet. The two are inseparable, and their love should be read as an endorsement of selecting a romantic partner with whom an individual shares key interests and orientations. Yet their relationship also speaks to the novel’s interest in the complexity of love: The two never “settle down” into a normative relationship and although their passion is lifelong and they have a child together, they do not marry. The arc of their union suggests that it is possible to love and commit to someone without marrying them.

Bev and Ichor are Hugo’s parents. Their role in the narrative is not huge and their characters are not as developed as those of its principal figures, but they do help the author to explore several of her key themes. Bev owns the local bookstore and hosts the town’s book club. Her son Hugo is as adept as Bev is at helping people find the right book, and together the two help the townspeople to both enjoy reading and save money. Because the books Bev and Hugo choose (Eat Pray Love, Madame Bovary, and The Road) are critical to the novel’s broader discussions about the nature of love and relationships, Bev is an essential part of the novel’s thematic structure. Her husband Ichor, because of his interest in sustainable farming, alternatives to pesticides, and the cultivation of regional plants whose growth does not harm the ecosystem, helps the author to further explore themes focused on agriculture and the environment. Additionally, Bev and Ichor are loving, involved parents, and they become another exemplar of the importance of parental love. Like Crystal, they would do anything for their children and they speak to the idea that love takes many forms, and romantic attachment should not necessarily be privileged above other forms of love.