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The Plague of Doves: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Louise Erdrich
Publisher: Harper
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $13.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  32 reviews
Sales Rank: 2874
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
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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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 27 more reviews...
 Magnificent September 2, 2008
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 Erdrich weaves a spectacular tapestry of love, revenge, loss, hope, and miracles. I simply loved this book!
The Ways We Need Each Other August 30, 2008
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.
Disjointed, but still Pretty Good August 26, 2008
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.
The interconnectedness of everything August 14, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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 of Ingmar Bergman) in which the inhabitants of rural North Dakota go forth from the Catholic Church, led by a priest with a makeshift censer, into the fields to beat and shoo away hordes of doves -- or, apparently, passenger pigeons -- which cover the terrain. But throughout the novel there is a lot of dove-like beating of wings in people's souls and bodies, and there are several references to the dove as the incarnation of the Holy Spirit and there is a sense in which some of the characters' anxieties can be traced to a little too much religious fervor.
Typical, perhaps, of a small town on the high plains, everyone seems to be related somehow to someone else and to some of the legendary or mythical events of the past, especially the 1911 murders and lynchings. As Judge Coutts says, "Nothing that happens, nothing, is not connected here by blood."
Throughout, there are numerous references to the life of the contemporary Indian (specifically, the Ojibwe), but in a casual, off-hand manner, without ever even beginning to coalesce into a screed or polemic. Rather than the plight of Native Americans, the novel is more about various aspects of the plight of human beings. And the subsurface message is that humans come and go in the continuous transformation of the universe. Indeed, entire towns and peoples come and go.
In addition to moments of tragedy and human cruelty, there are also moments of love and episodes of high hilarity. Indeed, THE PLAGUE OF DOVES is narrated, for the most part, in voices (there are four different narrators) of love and good humor. The novel is not uniform in quality, and it is not a "great" novel, but it is quite well-done and well worth reading. It was the first of Louise Erdrich's novels that I read, and I will make a point to read more of her work.
Plague of Doves August 4, 2008
Louise Erdrich writes complex, fascinating novels. Plague of Doves continues her tradition by focusing on the murder of a farm family a few generations earlier in North Dakota. As in the author's previous tales, plots weave in and out to form a tapestry, this time, of intermarriage between Ojibwe and white, false accusations, family truths which are only true for them, historical injustice, love, and lies.
The narrators are Evalina Harp, Marn Wolde, Judge Antone Bazil Coutts and Doctor Cordelia Lochren. Evalina tells of her Grandfather Mooshum's recollection of his first encounter with his wife... "'And there she was!' Mooshum paused in his story. His hands opened and the hundreds of wrinkles in his face folded into a mask of unsurpassable happiness." He goes on to describe how they both were young teens attempting to scare away the thousands of doves invading their fields. The couple ran and didn't look back. But they do come back and play a major role in the tale.
The narrators tell their stories; however, the tapestry remains unfinished, waiting for the next generation to weave their own pattern. We, the readers, know some truths before the inhabitants of the story. Stamps, violins, and a hanging tree all play small, yet important parts.
Erdrich is a master. As the tale unfolds, she draws us into the compelling community that on the surface is ordinary and mundane, and underneath is full of the high drama of humanity. She excels at portraying people, people most of us would never meet, yet people who will remain in our consciousness.
by Judith Helburn
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
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