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The Plague of Doves: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Louise Erdrich
Publisher: Harper
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy Used: $11.70
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Rating:  37 reviews
Sales Rank: 1439
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6.5 x 1.1
ISBN: 0060515120
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780060515126
ASIN: 0060515120
Publication Date: May 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: EX-LIBRARY; used item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned for refund. Buy with confidence - your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics!
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Product Description
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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| Customer Reviews: Read 32 more reviews...
 Brutal, crazy and in the end stunning! May 2, 2008
Gretchen Schwenee
26 out of 27 found this review helpful
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!
"Nothing that happens, nothing, is not connected here by blood." May 5, 2008
Mary Whipple (New England)
29 out of 31 found this review helpful
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 Ojibwe 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 while, ironically, only an infant daughter of the Lochrens, 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
powerful and lyrical May 7, 2008
David W. Straight (knoxville, tennessee United States)
12 out of 14 found this review helpful
This is a beautifully-written work, poignant and evocative, about a deeply rural community in North Dakota. In ways it's almost like a Greek tragedy, with the weaving, measuring, and cutting of the threads by Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. Many books try to introduce a lot of characters and tie their fates together--as in a plane crash (rarely effective) or in, say, Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey (done effectively). Plague of Doves is more like Wilder's novel: the threads are woven together with a masterful skill--everything fits and makes perfect sense. You get about 10 different narrators, although some appear only briefly.
The story spans over a hundred years, and involves the murder of a family, a retaliatory lynching, and how those stories interact with the current-day narrators. Much of the book is about the interrelationships of the whites, the Indians, and the Metis (mixed-breed Indian/white): there are stories about the 1885 Northwest Rebellion and Louis Riel. One of the main characters is supposedly named after Riel's girlfriend. This happened long ago--but it isn't remote. Some of the narration is by old Indians, and their parents or grandparents were deeply involved in the events of 1885 and the murders and lynching in 1911. The title of the book also comes from such a narration--it refers to a time where passenger pigeons were like a plague of giant locusts: it adds an almost surreal element to the story.
You'll find yourself swept along, both forwards and backwards in time, from the late 1800s to the present, and everything intertwines and interlocks in a truly lyrical manner. This is storytelling at its best!
Back again to Yoknapatawpha County North May 28, 2008
K. L. Cotugno (San Francisco, CA USA)
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
I've been reading Ms. Erdrich for over 20 years now, and each time I pick up one of her books, I am amazed how consistent she is in her talent. As I've said in other reviews, she's created her own Yoknapatawpha County in North Dakota, peopled with her mixed ancestors, and continues to delight. The beautiful review above from the Washington Post lays out the story without any spoilers. Erdrich creates haunting novels woven together of seemingly disparate stories that coalese in the end to make a satisfying whole. Almost a web of short stories, but each involving and intriguing in its own right, necessary to the integrated whole.
Delightfully unpredictable May 16, 2008
Bookreporter.com (New York, New York)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
THE PLAGUE OF DOVES, Louise Erdrich's first novel in almost three years, opens in 1911, as an unknown man stands in a room filled with the scent of blood. He plays a violin solo on a gramophone while repairing his jammed gun. The music soothes a screaming baby in a crib. The scene fades out as the gunman raises his weapon.
Many years later, a girl named Evelina relates a significant event in the life of Mooshum, her grandfather. In 1896, Indians and whites gathered in an attempt to defeat the flocks of doves devouring their crops. Although the people tried burning great fires and driving the birds into nets, the doves continued to demolish wheat, rye and corn plants. Mooshum was a young boy who joined with the others in a long line, walking through the fields to try to clear them. The birds were gathered solidly on the ground; one flew up and hit Mooshum on the head, knocking him down. When he opened his eyes, a young girl named Junesse was tending to him. The two fell in love instantly and ran away together.
Evelina knows of love herself, for she has written the name of her one true love, Corwin Peace, repeatedly on her body. Although he shoves Evelina and teases her about her braces, she counts it as a temporary setback to their romance. And soon Corwin is gazing directly and meaningfully into her eyes at church. Corwin and Evelina's story and the tale of Mooshum and Junesse alternate, the past mixing with the present, until Junesse is just a memory and Mooshum has fallen in love with the town's self-appointed historian, Neve Harp.
Meanwhile, Evelina is furious with Corwin and becomes obsessed with her teacher, Sister Mary Anita, who is young and athletic but has a jaw and teeth that remind Evelina of a dinosaur. Evelina's feelings for the nun overpower and confuse her. One day Mooshum explains just why he believes that Sister Mary Anita became a nun. Mooshum is a born storyteller who takes Evelina (and the book's readers) back to the terrible day in 1911 when he and his companions happened upon a farm, where he knew instinctively that something was horribly wrong. The men discovered a baby, alive and screaming but surrounded by dead bodies. This led to an unspeakable injustice, with reverberations echoing down the years --- and an ultimate impact complete with intriguing puzzles, which unexpectedly contort the plot of THE PLAGUE OF DOVES later in the tale.
As always, Louise Erdrich ensnares readers by carrying us into the richly imagined lives of her characters. Their stories veer into delightful unpredictability as they weave together into a complex narrative lush with mystery, humor, sorrow and history. Fans of Erdrich's work and newcomers alike will be charmed with this latest offering.
--- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon (terryms2001@yahoo.com)
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