Product Description

A beautiful, compelling, utterly original new novel from one of the most important American writers of our time. Pluto, North Dakota, is a town on the verge of extinction. Its unsavory origins -- which lie in white greed -- contain the seeds of its demise. Here, everybody is connected -- by love or friendship, by blood, and, most importantly, by the burden of a shared history. Evelina Harp, a witty, ambitious young girl, part Ojibwe, part white, is growing up on the reservation. She is prone to falling hopelessly in love, most notably with her cousin, Corwin Peace, a misfit with a late-discovered talent for music, and then with her teacher, Sister Maria Anita Buckendorf, a godzilla-like nun whose frank acceptance of herself is irresistible. Mooshum, Evelina's grandfather, is a seductive storyteller, a repository of family and tribal history; listening enraptured to his tales Evelina learns of a horrific crime that has marked both Ojibwe and whites, whose fates have been inextricably bound ever since. Nobody understands the weight of that crime better than Judge Antone Bazil Coutts, a half breed from Pluto, who also suffers from pains in the love department; as a judge on the reservation, he keeps watch over its inhabitants and recounts their lives with compassion and rare insight. In distinct and winning voices, Evelina and Judge Coutts unravel the intertwining stories of their families, their friends, and their lovers, the descendents of both the perpetrators and victims of the historic crime. Louise Erdrich's characteristically graceful prose and sense of the comic and the tragic sweep readers along to the surprising conclusion of this stunning novel, a portrait of the complex allegiances, passions, and drama of a haunting land and its all-too-human people.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #119865 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 356 pages

Review
'Louise Erdrich's imaginative freedom has reached its zenith -- "The Plague of Doves" is her dazzling masterpiece' Philip Roth 'A masterly new novel!Writing in prose that combines the magical sleight of hand of Gabriel Garcia Marquez with the earthy, American rhythms of Faulkner, Ms. Erdrich!has written what is arguably her most ambitious--and in many ways, her most deeply affecting--work yet' Michiko Kakutani, New York Times Confirms her reputation as a writer able to combine the apocalyptic with the mundane world whose inhabitants are set loose to roam the heavens in spirit but are ballasted always by their defiantly human bodies.' Observer 'You could read Louise Erdrich's latest book for its wisdom...Or you could read The Plague of Doves for its poetry...in the end, you'll read this book for its stories...The stories told by her characters offer pleasures of language, of humor, of sheer narrative momentum, that shine even in the darkest moments of the book' Boston Globe 'Wholly felt and exquisitely rendered tales of memory and magic...By the novel's end, and in classic Erdrich fashion, every luminous fragment has been assembled into an intricate tapestry that deeply satisfies the mind, the heart, and the spirit' O magazine 'The Plague of Doves is Erdrich's dazzling masterpiece'.' Philip Roth 'A masterly new novel!Writing in prose that combines the magical sleight of hand of Gabriel Garcia Marquez with the earthy, American rhythms of Faulkner, Ms. Erdrich!has written what is arguably her most ambitious--and in many ways, her most deeply affecting--work yet.' Michiko Kakutani, New York Times 'You could read Louise Erdrich's latest book for its wisdom...Or you could read The Plague of Doves for its poetry...in the end, you'll read this book for its stories...The stories told by her characters offer pleasures of language, of humor, of sheer narrative momentum, that shine even in the darkest moments of the book.' Boston Globe 'Wholly felt and exquisitely rendered tales of memory and magic...By the novel's end, and in classic Erdrich fashion, every luminous fragment has been assembled into an intricate tapestry that deeply satisfies the mind, the heart, and the spirit'. O magazine Praise for Louise Erdrich: 'Louise Erdrich is the rarest kind of writer, as compassionate as she is sharp-sighted.' Anne Tyler 'Intricate and beautifully written...Erdrich is a writer who believes that life is change and who is never afraid to let her characters experience it.' Margot Livesey, Boston Sunday Globe, on 'The Painted Drum' 'Intimate and epic, tender and violent...Erdrich manages to reveal the hope and fears, the history and gossip, the public and private myths of an entire community. She writes with immense sympathy, without a trace of moralism, and with a grace that makes the most extreme, even gothic, events plausible and convincing.' Francine Prose, People Magazine, on 'The Master Butchers Singing Club' 'Joyful and miraculous...It is no small feat to create a whole world, people it believably, and then record the histories of those people (one thinks of Faulkner and Garcia Marquez), but Louise Erdrich is more than equal to the task.' San Francisco Chronicle on 'The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse'

New York Times
'A masterly new novel...arguably her most ambitious--and in many ways, her most deeply affecting--work yet.'

Boston Globe
'The stories told by her characters offer pleasures of language, of humor [and] of sheer narrative momentum.'

Customer Reviews

The Ways We Need Each Other

The Plague of Doves is a surprising novel, one that's made up of interconnected short stories with many different narrators that reveal hidden, important connections over several generations. The book will appeal most to those who love to listen to old stories . . . and the old people who tell them.

Pluto, North Dakota forms the center of interactions among Native Americans and the eager dreamers who want to build a better life on the plains. The book moves back to the first expedition where the theme of "we need each other is established." You'll find out that early cooperation soon turned to hatred and violence, after the white settlers decide that a family was murdered by the Native Americans who found the victims. Alliances and attractions rapidly splinter as intermarriage follows the violence.

While many might think that small-town North Dakota has to be pretty boring, Ms. Erdrich chooses to endow her characters with extreme quirks and strong appetites that lead them to places where you've probably never thought about going. Before you are down, you'll find your jaw dropping at least a few times when secrets are revealed and conflicts resolved in unexpected ways.

Ultimately, the book has another broad theme: Can we really know what happened in the past? Ms. Erdrich displays a world in which perspectives are extremely fragmented, people don't tell the truth, stories are embellished, and secrets are jealously guarded.

Look, too, for the theme of whether physical things matter in the long run.

I felt that Ms. Erdrich went too far in being sure that our jaws drop. To me, she wrote a story that seems beyond implausible so that I was often watching her write rather than feeling immersed in the story.

"Nothing that happens, nothing, is not connected here by blood."
(4.5 stars) 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. Mary Whipple

Meandering
In the tiny township of Pluto, North Dakota, a family are murdered, all but a baby girl. The ripples caused by this event finally dissipate in the life of Evelina Harp, whose family and neighbours are caught up in the incident in various ways. Pluto is a place of intersecting and complicated relationships and Evelina, part Ojibwe, finds growing up and leaving presents peculiar and almost insurmountable challenges.

If my summary seems oblique, then this reflects the plot of "A Plague of Doves". The story is narrated by Evelina, the granddaughter of Mooshum who suffers a terrible injustice and Judge Coutts, who courts Evelina's aunt and tells the story of the Peace family, whose life is interwoven with Evelina's. The links between the two are so tangential and there are so many discursions into other tales about the history of Pluto and its founders; that it's difficult to maintain a sense of the basic story line and because of this any tension that might be generated by the central incident - the slaying of the family - dissipates early on. This is a pity because Erdrich's writing is playful and richly descriptive, but without the rigour of a plot, tends to ramble in any direction that takes the author's interest. We have anecdotes about violins, legends of the Ojibwe clan, stories about lost settlers and an excursion into the sinister snake cult set up by Billy Peace, all of which add colour, but contribute nothing to the resolution of the story. This telling of side stories can work very well, but only when the plot is strong enough to pull the reader back in and while the writing is strong enough to make "Plague of Doves" worth reading for this alone, the lack of a central story may leave you feeling lost.