Books : The Plague of Doves: A Novel

Rating: - Delightfully unpredictable
THE PLAGUE OF DOVES, Louise Erdrich's first novel in almost three years, opens in 1911, as an unknown man stands in a room filled with the scent of blood. He plays a violin solo on a gramophone while repairing his jammed gun. The music soothes a screaming baby in a crib. The scene fades out as the gunman raises his weapon.

Many years later, a girl named Evelina relates a significant event in the life of Mooshum, her grandfather. In 1896, Indians and whites gathered in an attempt to defeat the flocks of doves devouring their crops. Although the people tried burning great fires and driving the birds into nets, the doves continued to demolish wheat, rye and corn plants. Mooshum was a young boy who joined with the others in a long line, walking through the fields to try to clear them. The birds were gathered solidly on the ground; one flew up and hit Mooshum on the head, knocking him down. When he opened his eyes, a young girl named Junesse was tending to him. The two fell in love instantly and ran away together.

Evelina knows of love herself, for she has written the name of her one true love, Corwin Peace, repeatedly on her body. Although he shoves Evelina and teases her about her braces, she counts it as a temporary setback to their romance. And soon Corwin is gazing directly and meaningfully into her eyes at church. Corwin and Evelina's story and the tale of Mooshum and Junesse alternate, the past mixing with the present, until Junesse is just a memory and Mooshum has fallen in love with the town's self-appointed historian, Neve Harp.

Meanwhile, Evelina is furious with Corwin and becomes obsessed with her teacher, Sister Mary Anita, who is young and athletic but has a jaw and teeth that remind Evelina of a dinosaur. Evelina's feelings for the nun overpower and confuse her. One day Mooshum explains just why he believes that Sister Mary Anita became a nun. Mooshum is a born storyteller who takes Evelina (and the book's readers) back to the terrible day in 1911 when he and his companions happened upon a farm, where he knew instinctively that something was horribly wrong. The men discovered a baby, alive and screaming but surrounded by dead bodies. This led to an unspeakable injustice, with reverberations echoing down the years --- and an ultimate impact complete with intriguing puzzles, which unexpectedly contort the plot of THE PLAGUE OF DOVES later in the tale.

As always, Louise Erdrich ensnares readers by carrying us into the richly imagined lives of her characters. Their stories veer into delightful unpredictability as they weave together into a complex narrative lush with mystery, humor, sorrow and history. Fans of Erdrich's work and newcomers alike will be charmed with this latest offering.

--- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon (terryms2001@yahoo.com)

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Rating: - Plagued by Short Stories
This is my first novel by this author, and it will probably win a major award this year. That being said, I was glad when, for some unknown reason, I turned to the end of the book halfway through and noticed in the acknowledgements that it had originally appeared as short stories in various periodicals. That explained to me the disjointed nature of the narrative, and I was somewhat relieved at my bewilderment.

"When we are young, the words are scattered all around us. As they are assembled by experience, so also are we, sentence by sentence, until the story takes shape." (p. 268) The story must have a shape, and this one falls short. It reads like the short stories that it was. I would argue that it is individual stories of individual characters - albeit well-written stories - with no real plot.

A family tree on the inside cover would have helped too. Ms. Erdrich may have lived with her characters for years, but I hadn't, and as another reviewer wrote, it was easy to forget who was related to whom.

Nevertheless, I give it 3 stars for the some of the more interesting short stories and characters.

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Rating: - powerful and lyrical
This is a beautifully-written work, poignant and evocative, about a deeply rural community in North Dakota. In ways it's almost like a Greek tragedy, with the weaving, measuring, and cutting of the threads by Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. Many books try to introduce a lot of characters and tie their fates together--as in a plane crash (rarely effective) or in, say, Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey (done effectively). Plague of Doves is more like Wilder's novel: the threads are woven together with a masterful skill--everything fits and makes perfect sense. You get about 10 different narrators, although some appear only briefly.

The story spans over a hundred years, and involves the murder of a family, a retaliatory lynching, and how those stories interact with the current-day narrators. Much of the book is about the interrelationships of the whites, the Indians, and the Metis (mixed-breed Indian/white): there are stories about the 1885 Northwest Rebellion and Louis Riel. One of the main characters is supposedly named after Riel's girlfriend. This happened long ago--but it isn't remote. Some of the narration is by old Indians, and their parents or grandparents were deeply involved in the events of 1885 and the murders and lynching in 1911. The title of the book also comes from such a narration--it refers to a time where passenger pigeons were like a plague of giant locusts: it adds an almost surreal element to the story.

You'll find yourself swept along, both forwards and backwards in time, from the late 1800s to the present, and everything intertwines and interlocks in a truly lyrical manner. This is storytelling at its best!

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Rating: - "Nothing that happens, nothing, is not connected here by blood."
When Seraph Milk, known as Mooshum to his young granddaughter Evelina, haltingly tells her about a brutal 1911 crime in which he was involved, he reveals the underlying horrors which unite and divide all the families she knows. Mooshum was one of four Ojibwe Indians from Pluto, North Dakota, who were captured and strung up for the gruesome murder of the Lochrens, a white family. Only Mooshum, among the Indians captured in the area immediately after the murders, miraculously survived the vigilante hangings, and while, ironically, only an infant daughter of the Lochrens, overlooked by the murderer or murderers, survived the massacre.

The murder and lynching reverberate through the relationships within both the Indian and white communities over almost one hundred years. Erdrich is at her best here, telling overlapping family stories--horrifying, loving, hilarious, mystical, passionate, lyrical, and thoughtful--as she reveals life in the Native American and white communities from multiple points of view, across time. As the characters evolve, Erdrich reveals her major theme--the diminishing hold the distant past has on successive generations as each generation creates and feeds on its own past. The influx of white residents to Pluto, numerous intermarriages, and the influence of Christian priests, among other effects, all reduce the emphasis on shared Native American values.

Filling her novel with vibrant characters who reveal their lives and stories--and often cast new light on old stories--Erdrich creates a kaleidoscope of swirling images and moods, filled with irony. The drama of the murder and hangings shares time and space with hilarious scenes in which Mooshum and his unregenerate friends taunt the local priest. Ironically, other members of his family consider becoming priests. Evelina, the third generation, looks for answers, not in religion, but in psychology and love. Another young man Evelina's age becomes an evangelical preacher with a large commune and a snake-handling wife. Though the past and tradition exert their influence, they become less important to subsequent generations, who look toward the future, and by the end of the novel, "the dead of Pluto now outnumber the living."

Though some of Erdrich's character sketches and stories end rather abruptly, perhaps that, too, is part of the thematic structure--in real life such stories also end abruptly, as times and people change. With a far greater emphasis on characters and their stories than we have seen in Erdrich's most recent, more plot-based novels, and with a grand canopy of theme overarching all, this novel is a triumph--big, broad, thoughtful, and ultimately, important. n Mary Whipple

The Painted Drum: A Novel (P.S.)
The Master Butchers Singing Club (P.S.)
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse: A Novel
The Beet Queen: A Novel (P.S.)
The Porcupine Year

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Rating: - Brutal, crazy and in the end stunning!
I first came to know Erdrich after reading The Master Butchers Singing Club (P.S.) a couple years ago and loved it. I since have gone back and read Tracks and The Painted Drum: A Novel (P.S.) which I found equally as good. So it was a happy surprise to find "The Plague of Doves" at my book store the other day and I am happy to report she has written another book that I cant stop thinking about. The book begins with the 1911 murders of a North Dakota farm family. Only a baby daughter is spared. But when a group of destitute Indians come upon the scene they find the baby but fear the murders will be blamed on them. Instead they leave an unsigned note for the local sheriff in hopes he will find the baby. Things go horribly wrong though and a posse is formed and the Indians lynched. This scene in the book is very powerful and brought back memories of The Ox-Bow Incident (Modern Library Classics) (highly recommended by the way). This might be an entire plot line for a novel but it is just the opening scene here. Over the next 100 years the lives of the relatives of the Indians and the lynch Mob continue to intersect in this small town and the sins of their ancestors continue to haunt them. Like pieces of a puzzle the author tells their stories through the decades, at times they seem to be going in opposite directions, but in the end the author brings it all together in a stunning conclusion. This is a deeply layered novel with many voices that could have become a mess in unskilled hands (in fact there were times I was scratching my headtrying to keep all the characters stright) but in the end Erdich works her magic again. Another novel where the author skillfully weaves in a number of voices into the narrative is "Misfits Country" highly recommended!