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The Plague of Doves: A Novel
by: Louise Erdrich

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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780060515126
ISBN: 0060515120
Label: Harper
Manufacturer: Harper
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: May 01, 2008
Publisher: Harper
Release Date: April 29, 2008
Sales Rank: 2577
Studio: Harper

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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.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Magnificent
I consider Louise Erdrich the finest writer there is. Having read all of her novels, I seem to imagine that she cannot improve on her earliest works. My relationship with "Love Medicine" is so strong that I am drawn to stroke the binding to stay connected with it. Here, in The Plague of Doves, she introduces us to another array of astonishing characters, none with the familiar names her readers have loved and cherished over the years. This time, I pulled out my atlas, convinced these towns must exist! I only have to hear the name of North Dakota to conjure up her characters. Even looking at the atlas and seeing these missing towns, I imagine they're still there if you just hold the maps the right way and look hard enough. I encourage all potential readers to go back and start at the beginning--meet the Kashpaws, the Nanapushs, the Morrisseys--or just start here and begin the journey in Pluto. As always, Louise ... Read More

Rating:

- 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 ... Read More

Rating:

- Disjointed, but still Pretty Good
It's been some years since I last read a book by Louise Erdrich. She is a fine writer, and despite my hiatus, Plague felt comfortably familiar. Erdrich is sort of a Native American Toni Morrison. Well-turned phrases, interesting and touching vignettes, and a touch of comedy keep me coming back for more, but I sometimes feel that there is a layer to her narratives which is just outside my reach (I feel that way with Toni Morrison too; maybe I'm not clever enough to be reading these books). The stories were somewhat disjointed, reflecting the nature of their previous incarnations in literary-style magazines.

Rating:

- The interconnectedness of everything
THE PLAGUE OF DOVES was stitched together from a number of short stories, many of them previously published in "The New Yorker". There is a bit of disjointedness, but it is remarakable how well the patchwork comes together to make a whole, integral quilt (a metaphor that I see has occurred to other reviewers as well).

The novel covers a century of life in North Dakota, focusing on the lives of several Ojibwe Indian families and the Europeans who interact and intermarry with them. The central event is the murder, in 1911, of a farm family (save for an infant daughter who is overlooked and reappears near the end of the book), and the subsequent lynching of three Indians, rashly and wrongly accused of the murders (though sparing a fourth Indian, who, much later in life, is a central figure in the narrative). "The Plague of Doves" is the story that opens the book, and it features an almost surreal scene (I think ... Read More

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