The Plague of Doves: A Novel | Louise Erdrich | Brutal, crazy and in the end stunning!

The Plague of Doves: A Novel | Louise Erdrich | "Nothing that happens, nothing, is not connected here by blood."

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The Plague of Dove...

	The Plague of Doves: A Novel Louise Erdrich Harper, 2008 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
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Louise Erdrich's mesmerizing new novel, her first in almost three years, centers on a compelling mystery. The unsolved murder of a farm family haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The vengeance exacted for this crime and the subsequent distortions of truth transform the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation and shape the passions of both communities for the next generation. The descendants of Ojibwe and white intermarry, their lives intertwine; only the youngest generation, of mixed blood, remains unaware of the role the past continues to play in their lives.

Evelina Harp is a witty, ambitious young girl, part Ojibwe, part white, who is prone to falling hopelessly in love. Mooshum, Evelina's grandfather, is a seductive storyteller, a repository of family and tribal history with an all-too-intimate knowledge of the violent past. Nobody understands the weight of historical injustice better than Judge Antone Bazil Coutts, a thoughtful mixed blood who witnesses the lives of those who appear before him, and whose own love life reflects the entire history of the territory. In distinct and winning voices, Erdrich's narrators unravel the stories of different generations and families in this corner of North Dakota. Bound by love, torn by history, the two communities' collective stories finally come together in a wrenching truth revealed in the novel's final pages.

The Plague of Doves is one of the major achievements of Louise Erdrich's considerable oeuvre, a quintessentially American story and the most complex and original of her books.

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Brutal, crazy and in the end stunning!

I first came to know Erdrich after reading The Master Butchers Singing Club (P.S.) a couple years ago and loved it. I since have gone back and read Tracks and The Painted Drum: A Novel (P.S.) which I found equally as good. So it was a happy surprise to find "The Plague of Doves" at my book store the other day and I am happy to report she has written another book that I cant stop thinking about. The book begins with the 1911 murders of a North Dakota farm family. Only a baby daughter is spared. But when a group of destitute Indians come upon the scene they find the baby but fear the murders will be blamed on them. Instead they leave an unsigned note for the local sheriff in hopes he will find the baby. Things go horribly wrong though and a posse is formed and the Indians lynched. This scene in the book is very powerful and brought back memories of The Ox-Bow Incident (Modern Library Classics) (highly recommended by the way). This might be an entire plot line for a novel but it is just the opening scene here. Over the next 100 years the lives of the relatives of the Indians and the lynch Mob continue to intersect in this small town and the sins of their ancestors continue to haunt them. Like pieces of a puzzle the author tells their stories through the decades, at times they seem to be going in opposite directions, but in the end the author brings it all together in a stunning conclusion. This is a deeply layered novel with many voices that could have become a mess in unskilled hands (in fact there were times I was scratching my headtrying to keep all the characters stright) but in the end Erdich works her magic again. Another novel where the author skillfully weaves in a number of voices into the narrative is "Misfits Country" highly recommended!

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"Nothing that happens, nothing, is not connected here by blood."

When Seraph Milk, known as Mooshum to his young granddaughter Evelina, haltingly tells her about a brutal 1911 crime in which he was involved, he reveals the underlying horrors which unite and divide all the families she knows. Mooshum was one of four Ojibwa Indians from Pluto, North Dakota, who were captured and strung up for the gruesome murder of the Lochrens, a white family. Only Mooshum, among the Indians captured in the area immediately after the murders, miraculously survived the vigilante hangings, and ironically, only an infant daughter, overlooked by the murderer or murderers, survived the massacre.

The murder and lynching reverberate through the relationships within both the Indian and white communities over almost one hundred years. Erdrich is at her best here, telling overlapping family stories--horrifying, loving, hilarious, mystical, passionate, lyrical, and thoughtful--as she reveals life in the Native American and white communities from multiple points of view, across time. As the characters evolve, Erdrich reveals her major theme--the diminishing hold the distant past has on successive generations as each generation creates and feeds on its own past. The influx of white residents to Pluto, numerous intermarriages, and the influence of Christian priests, among other effects, all reduce the emphasis on shared Native American values.

Filling her novel with vibrant characters who reveal their lives and stories--and often cast new light on old stories--Erdrich creates a kaleidoscope of swirling images and moods, filled with irony. The drama of the murder and hangings shares time and space with hilarious scenes in which Mooshum and his unregenerate friends taunt the local priest. Ironically, other members of his family consider becoming priests. Evelina, the third generation, looks for answers, not in religion, but in psychology and love. Another young man Evelina's age becomes an evangelical preacher with a large commune and a snake-handling wife. Though the past and tradition exert their influence, they become less important to subsequent generations, who look toward the future, and by the end of the novel, "the dead of Pluto now outnumber the living."

Though some of Erdrich's character sketches and stories end rather abruptly, perhaps that, too, is part of the thematic structure--in real life such stories also end abruptly, as times and people change. With a far greater emphasis on characters and their stories than we have seen in Erdrich's most recent, more plot-based novels, and with a grand canopy of theme overarching all, this novel is a triumph--big, broad, thoughtful, and ultimately, important. n Mary Whipple

The Painted Drum: A Novel (P.S.)
The Master Butchers Singing Club (P.S.)
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse: A Novel
The Beet Queen: A Novel (P.S.)
The Porcupine Year

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