Genealogy Books - The Plague of Doves: A Novel

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Summary: Magnificent
Comment: 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!

Customer Rating:

Summary: The Ways We Need Each Other
Comment: 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.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Disjointed, but still Pretty Good
Comment: 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.

Customer Rating:

Summary: The interconnectedness of everything
Comment: 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.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Plague of Doves
Comment: 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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