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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