The Plague of Doves: A Novel

The Plague of Doves: A Novel
by Louise Erdrich

The Plague of Doves: A Novel
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Book Summary Information

Author: Louise Erdrich
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-05-01
ISBN: 0060515120
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Harper

Book Reviews of The Plague of Doves: A Novel

Book Review: despite the best of intentions
Summary: 3 Stars

I tried. I really did. I mean, this is Louise Erdrich, right? Yes, that Louise Erdrich, the author of Love Medicine and Tracks and an important voice in contemporary literature. But despite my best of intentions, I could not engage with this novel and found myself skimming and skipping. As I was reading it, much of it seemed vaguely familiar, and I wondered if it was just more of earlier Erdrich. I soon realized, however, that I was reading the many short stories of hers I had read over the past few years, almost none of which had impressed me. Having them all together under one title didn't help much either. As a series of set pieces there are many vivid and memorable scenes (noted by other reviewers), but the characters in those scenes never develop fully into people about whom I could care. And I should care, considering some of the dramatic and tragic events that transpire--elopements, hangings, religious cults, kidnappings. The characters felt almost like automatons, going through their motions before stepping offstage. I had hopes that the complex relationships--and the central tragedy that unites them--would come together in the end with a big payoff, and perhaps it does . . . but by then I had given up. I skipped ahead and got to the end (which I knew already anyway from the short fiction) and closed the book with a sigh. I feel for the poignant history of American Indian characters, love the direct narrative style Erdrich uses, and thrill at the flights (: of imagination she takes, and yet none of these could rescue the book for me. I might add that my co-worker and a dedicated reader loved the book and, as she said, cried at the end, so maybe there are better readers out there than I. But I gave it my very best effort and read with the best of intentions, only to leave with less than the best memories.

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.

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