The Plague of Doves: A Novel
by Louise Erdrich
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Book Summary Information
Author: Louise ErdrichEdition: Hardcover
Published: 2008-05-01
ISBN: 0060515120
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Harper
Book Reviews of The Plague of Doves: A Novel
Book Review: The interconnectedness of everything
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Summary of The Plague of Doves: A Novel
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.
Erdrich, Louise Books
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