Short description
A beautiful, compelling, utterly original new novel from one of the most important American writers of our time.
Long 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.
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'