The Plague of Doves A Novel

Louise Erdrich — 2008

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.

Reviews

Daryl Houston@dllh

Sep 30, 2021

I didn't love this one as much as some of her other stuff, but it was good. I feel like if I had been able to read it in one or two sittings, it would have really dazzled me, but because of how its various threads through history are sort of braided together, I found myself losing nuance/details between reading sessions, so at times it felt disjointed, though I think it actually probably isn't disjointed. This is the second book in a row I've read of Erdrich's in which there's sort of a gotcha or surprise at the end, and I don't think I love that trend, though it wasn't so terrible. It's more of a 3 or 3.5 for me, really, but I think that's partially because I read it in a few fits and starts, and it's actually a better book than how I received it. The prose is really great as always with Erdrich in my experience so far.

Christine Liu@christineliu

Sep 1, 2021

This is an intricate and kaleidoscopic tapestry of a tale that opens in the wake of a brutal act of senseless violence. A family has been murdered in their home by an unnamed gunman who leaves behind a single survivor - a seven month old baby. The following chapters cover the events that occur in the small North Dakota reservation town over the next few decades, told through the voices of a number of different narrators, and it isn't until the end that we discover the identities of the family and their murderer. But this isn't a crime novel or murder mystery, and the killing of the family isn't central to the plot; rather, it's a catalyst that set off another violence act of senseless murder, and as the years pass, we see how intricately linked everyone is in this town as the descendants of the murderers and the murdered weave in and out of each other's lives. Louise Erdrich has such a gift for crafting these gorgeous, multilayered passages that are so brilliantly evocative and that often waver between haunting and hilarious.