A very powerful writer although book was at times hard to follow and got mired down in sexual content. Still all in all a good read.

I have always been a huge fan of Louise Erdrich, ever since she started out as a "local author" in my hometown area. Now I live in Europe and enjoy her books about where I grew up. This book is one of the best books I have ever read, hands down, by any author, and I am a very avid reader. She deftly manages several intertwining story lines, with well-developed characters and time settings - all without losing the reader; and for those who are paying attention it is a most satisfying and pleasurable read. Well done, Louise Erdrich, this book deserves a huge prize!

This seemed to be a series of short, disjointed stories, rather than an easy to follow novel. Too many characters to keep track of. Interesting Native American history though.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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

This was the first book I read of this author, and although I persevered through it, when I reached the end, I decided it was rather a waste of time. I couldn't remember who was related to whom, and why I should care. True, some of the writing was quite lyrical--maybe that's why I finished the book--but when I got to the end, I had to go back and figure out why the murder had been committed in the first place. I really couldn't relate to any of the characters, particularly, although I was moved by the tragedy of the lynching. Otherwise, Erdich's violin and all the music around it fell into a black hole for me. I wouldn't recommend this book.

I am a big fan of Louise Erdrich and have read most of her books. 'Plague of Doves' may not quite be her best, which I still think is 'Love Medecine' (which I totally recommend) but it's a very satisfying read if you like big novels with interlocking stories. 'Plague of Doves' is almost like 'The Hours' in the way that it interweaves plots from various timeframes and draws parallels between past and present events-although Erdrich's book has the advantage of also being a pretty good, suspenseful murder mystery. I found Erdrich's evocation of the historical setting of the Dakota Territory circa 1910 to be totally convincing and could easily picture this book as a TV mini-series. The best sections, though, are the ones that deal with everyday reservation life in the 1970s, which seemed to me completely convincing. There are lots of good, well-drawn characters here that you can identify with, especially Evelina, who narrates long portions of the book. In the end, I found the resolution of the murder slightly anti-climactic and really enjoyed the book most for its compelling sense of place and for all the small narratives interspersed throughout. All in all, a really good book to pack in your carry-on bag during a long vacation-which is how I read it!

Read a book in one sitting and tell about it.
I did wait to have a friend loan me this book because I think
25.95 USA is too expensive. My friend did not like PLAGUE OF DOVES.

Howsomever, this author has done it again. There seems to be a whole
new cast of characters and I could not reconize any (but will read it again and see) as it made me laugh and cry as I did with her first book LOVE MEDICINE.

Her manner of drawing one in with chapter titles such as "a little nip"
wherein not only do the old men sit around nipping on good whiskey, the pinto horse takes a nip out of nosy priest's arm and is just one of the many reasons this is a page turner.

I do wonder why she writes much about Dakota when the action is mostly in Minnesota and Montana. I think I know a man who has family who had connection to "MUSTACHE MAUDE" but will be surprised at love affair with Chief Gall. But was there really a Louis Riel?

Louise Erdrich's latest novel A Plague of Doves might be the best book I've read this year. I kept turning the pages as the drama that affected an entire town unravels showing the degree to which the traumatic murder of a family and subsequent lynching of innocent parties binds the townspeople together in a fascinating web of history.

A Plague of Doves is often compared to Faulkner. Erdrich's use of multiple narrators as well as the imagery, symbolism, and characters of her novel certainly evoke Faulkner, but readers daunted by Faulkner's style need not be afraid. A Plague of Doves contains no page-length sentences or stream-of-consciousness meanderings that make it difficult to follow. This story is told from the viewpoint of four different narrators who are all connected to the town's tragic past in various ways. One of the narrators, Evelina Harp, attempts to parse the connections upon first hearing about the story of the lynching:

"The story Mooshum told us had its repercussions -- the first being that I could not look at anyone in quite the same way anymore. I became obsessed with lineage. As I came to the end of my small leopard-print diary (its key useless as my brother had broken the clasp), I wrote down as much of Mooshum's story as I could remember, and then the relatives of everyone I knew -- parents, grandparents, way on back in time. I traced the blood history of the murders through my classmates and friends until I could draw out elaborate spider webs of lines and intersecting circles. I drew in pencil. There were a few people, one of them being Corwin Peace, whose chart was so complicated that I erased parts of it until I wore right through the paper." (86)

I drew my own family tree chart in the back of my book and added to it as I read and discovered new connections. After finishing the book, I wish I had thought to make index note cards, as one reviewer did, because the web of relations is so complicated. For all its complexity the story is that much richer and more real.

Several sections of Erdrich's novel could stand alone as short stories, and indeed, parts of it have been published as short fiction, as I learned on reading Erdrich's acknowledgments at the end of the book. If parts of the novel feel somewhat digressive as a result, I think Erdrich can be forgiven, for when the reader reaches the last few pages, all the digressions are shown to be pieces of a complex puzzle -- the reader doesn't know what the picture is until the last piece is put in place.

In addition to being a fairly good murder mystery, the novel is rich in imagery, symbolism, and well-drawn characters, and by the end of the novel, I felt like a resident of Pluto, North Dakota and felt sure that I had truly known all of these people and uncovered their bloody history myself. And that, after all, is what a good book should do for us. Go right out and get this book now! It's amazing!

A violin that seemingly causes the inadvertent death of one brother in the Peace family at the hands of another magically calls out to its next owner, an Ojibwe Indian named Shamengwa, after drifting about a lake in an empty canoe for twenty years, only to return to the modern-day Peace family via theft. A man quietly evolves his stamp collecting to include "disaster stamps," that is, stamps on letters associated with tragedies such as the Titanic. A locust-like invasion of white doves in 1896 accidentally brings together Seraph Milk, known now as Mooshum, with his life's love, Junesse, to form the family line of the young Evelina Harp, part white and part Ojibwe. A violin recording that reaches a "strange sweetness" lulls a crying infant to sleep and perhaps saves her life amidst a horrific family slaughter. Many years later, a violin once again exacts a form of revenge on that infant's family's murderer.

Louise Erdrich brings together the great silent expanses of the northern plains, the uneasy truce between White and Native Americans, and a touch of pantheistic, tribal mysticism to tell the story of three generations' residents in the unlikely town of Pluto, North Dakota. Ostensibly named before the planet Pluto was discovered, this Pluto nevertheless contains elements of both the mythological Greek underworld and the end of the solar system. If the end of the world (North Dakota) can have its own, slowly dying end of the world, Pluto is it.

The 1911 tragedy that left behind the surviving infant involved a brutal family slaying of a farm family - parents, a teenage girl, and her two younger brothers. In a racially-charged act of vigilante justice, three Indian men and a young boy who happened upon the murder scene several days later are hanged by a gang of white men. Miraculously, the boy survives the hanging. These twin acts of violence, set against the arbitrariness of Pluto's founding and the harshness of prairie life at a reservation's edge, create the stage upon which the town's Twentieth Century lives are played out in a context surpassingly unaffected by the rest of Twentieth Century history.

The balance of Erdrich's story chronicles the circuitous and complex interplay of white and Indian lives in the generations since those early days. Even as the vitality of their town fades away, the residents of Pluto live out their lives beneath the unsettling racist overhang of those unresolved murders and the subsequent "rough justice" meted out by whites to an innocent group of Ojibwes. Despite these faint currents of unease, family lines cross, races intermarry, and the descendants of victims intermingle with the descendants of victimizers.

Erdrich tells her story through multiple voices, predominantly those of the modern-day adolescent Evelina Harp and her uncle by marriage, Judge Antone Bazil Coutts. Their stories are interrupted by that of Marn Wolde, whose bizarre marriage to the cult-like Billy Peace forms one of the novel's strangest and most disassociated interludes, As each voice is heard and then heard again, the lives of Pluto's residents, past and present, slowly take form and cohere into relationships, patterns, and even repetitions. Judge Coutts, for example, reluctantly sells his house to the developer husband of his long-term paramour only to have the developer experience an echo of the dove plague when he sets out to demolish the structure. In the book's final pages a new, fourth voice appears, that of Doctor Cordelia Lochren, and it is through her workmanlike testimonial that many of Pluto's most enduring mysteries are finally resolved.

THE PLAGUE OF DOVES is a story of ancestral legacies passed down through and between families and races, tracing the manner in which those legacies affect the lives of descendants. Some are mystical and some are explicitly acknowledged, while others are ever present but never mentioned. Through it all, however, we are in Ms. Erdrich's view products both of our own making as well as all that came before us.

I love her stories and will keep on buying them. The pacing of this one was a bit odd, and I think the explanation is to be found in the notes at the end where you learn that various parts were published as free standing short stories in various magazines. Oh well. I was glad to have stuck it out and taken the time. I found it worth reading.

To be sure, this is not "Love Medicine," and the days of Lipsha Morrissey and family seem to be a dying ember, flickering off in the distant horizon. Nonetheless, Ms. Erdrich is a tremendously gifted writer, with a talent for weaving together stories that are absolutely mesmerizing. This is no different.

Though very well written and interesting in parts, I had a hard time feeling satisfied with the book as a novel. It was disjointed and had so many characters that I couldn't keep everyone straight. A family tree diagram would have been helpful. The ending and reveal of the murderer was totally flat with no motive given for the killings. It didn't even make sense. I found some of the sexual situations too descriptive for good taste. It seemed that they were more gratuitous than actually necessary for the plot. I plodded along through the whole book hoping that in the end it would all come together. But when I was finished, I wondered why I had bothered to read it. I was very disappointed with the book as a whole.

There were parts of this three generational book that were absolutely terrific. The members of oldest generation had spirit, uniqueness and depth. The second generation was a void. The third a mishmash that never found a voice that resonated. I looked forward to any scene that had the old men or the retrospective scenes.

The book, chronologically but not as written, starts with the lynching of Indians falsely accused of a massacreing a family, of which an infant survives. One of the group of Indians is spared and the yarn commences through him and his future generations. The telling is extremely disjointed. Only at the end are the relationships of some of the characters finally connected. This disjointedness really detracted from the book and the lack of continuity was aided by frequent use of nicknames which made character identification difficult.

The descendants of the lynching mob and victims stay in the area and relationships are formed. After two generations, I missed the point - do the youth really care? Should the reader? It seemed the lynching tale was merely a vehicle to bring together disparate character studies.

The good parts of the book - which were very good - offset the bad to make this a mediocre novel. It may have done much better as a collection of short stories with no pretense of connection.

When I read a review of this book in Vogue, I got so excited about it I searched for it for weeks. I finally found it in Borders, but having only $20 on me, I couldn't afford the $25 hardback. When I finally found the book in my local libary, I snatched it off the shelf!
The Plague of Doves is a story that chronicles a dying town in North Dakota. Along with tales of how the town was founded, the story centers around the murder of an entire farm family- of which only a sleeping infant was spared, and of the hanging of several town residents unfairly blamed for the crime. Tales of the town's mixed race residents (American Indian and French) are also included, told from the pov of Evelina, a girl who constantly hopelessly falls in love, her aunt's lover the Judge Coutts, and even her aunt's lover's former lover, among many. While interesting, the story doesn't seem to really have a point, and when the truth behind the murder is finally revealed (on the last page) the reader is left wondering what all the hype was.

My review is very prejudiced as I am a great of fan of all Susan Erdrich's works. Like most of her stories about Fleur's family and tribe this story is so interwoven and immersed in the past it makes the recently forgotten past all the more painful to read about. Americans think of themselves as so future oriented it is surprising to find ourselves just as trappped and burdened by the past as the rest of the Old World. Keep it coming Susan Erdrich!

I am a huge Erdrich fan, and it pains me to say that this book, like Last Report from Little No Horse, seems to have two or three monumental chapters that stand above the rest--the chapters that have also been published as short stories--and many of the other chapters seem to be a way from getting from one mountain to the next. Though it is not in my mind one of her best books, it is still an EXCELLENT book--even the weakest of Erdrich's books are brilliantly conceived and written. I also applaud the overall theme and message of the book: that one act of violence can affect generations of people, and that we must work to uncover the racist inequities of the past to heal the present. Recommended.

What a struggle to read through these disjointed tales of 3 generations. I was so anxious to read Erdich's latest; I've read and been nourished by all her preceding works.

Our summer cabin is on tribal land; I understand the culture. But who can keep track of all the characters? (and then their nicknames). If it wouldn't be so much work, I would re-read the entire book, with lists at hand, writing down names of characters and plot development.

As an English teacher, perhaps some transition is needed before another chapter and cast of characters bounds onto the page.

Yes, I did read the same book the 5-star reviewers did; I'm just glad that I'm done with the struggle and can return the book to the library.

It's very rare to find a combination of tremendous writing, complex narrative, and memorable characters. Erdrich has managed this. In a book that moves from one point of view to another, it is often easy to lose track of where and when you are. Not here. Erdrich's characters are so distinct, their voices so strong and individual, that I never got lost. This is a story of a family, a community, and a history, beautifully told. Definitely one of the top books I've read this year, and in years. I signed on to order more of Louise Erdrich's work, but wanted to give this book my enthusiastic recommendation first.

there were wonderful tales, but it was difficult to follow the plot and keep track of the characters. It is a great book for short stories, but more difficult as an ongoing tale. Maybe she intended for it to simply be a collection of stories of her home town and extended family.

Many reviewers have greatly praised this book. I have been a fan of Louise Erdrich for many years and have most of her books. This one is extraordinarily complicated, and really requires that you maintain a graph of the characters to understand their interelationships. The essence of the novel is that over generations family feuds and racial prejudices can dissolve and unite people that might never have grown together. It was a fasicinating read and obviously represented a great deal of work by Louise Erdrich.

The Plague of Doves is an astounding book. Louise Erdrich weaves in thoughts that make me stop and travel within them before reading on.
You will care about the people and stay in fascination as you delve into the events of their lives.
My favorite of her books, along with her children's books, is The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse. 'The floorboards wept (while being washed) at the playing of Chopin'....
I give Erdrich's The Blue Jay's Dance to every woman I know who is having a baby. Truly beautiful and valuable.

The reader should be forewarned that THE PLAGUE OF DOVES is more of a collection of short stories than a traditional novel. The "novel" is only loosely constructed around an early 20th century murder of a farm family near fictional Pluto, North Dakota, after which three Ojibway men were wrongfully accused and lynched.

Many of the same characters move in and out of the various stories. The Milk family is the most compelling. Seraph Milk or "Mooshum," and his brother Shamengwa were alive at the time of the lynchings. Mooshum's granddaughter, Evelina is a modern-era voice. Mooshum was almost hanged along with the other three Ojibways. He has turned into a loveable old man who offers comic relief in his dealings with the local Catholic priest. At one point, when his brother Shamengwa dies, the Catholic priest gets them mixed up and delivers a eulogy for Mooshum who is sitting in a pew grinning at the clergyman.

Evelina appeals more to our heartstrings. She's a college student and parttime waitress at one of the few remaining businesses in Pluto. She has a boyfriend, Corwin Peace, who is related to Cuthbert Peace, one of the three Indians lynched after the farm family was murdered. He turns to taking and selling drugs, but is saved by Shamengwa's violin, which has mystical properties. One of her teachers, Sister Mary Anita Buckendorf, is a descendant of one of the German farmers who hanged Cuthbert and the other two Indians. Evelina nicknames her "Godzilla" because of her unfortunate protruding chin, but regrets it when Corwin begins to antagonize the nun as well. Evelina eventually goes to work at an insane asylum where she falls in love with one of the female patients, complicating her relationship with Corwin. Evelina's plot line is never fully resolved. Perhaps it will be in a future edition of the NEW YORKER.

Erdrich works hard at establishing connections between the tormenters and the abused over three generations. One of the tormenters' progeny even marries a descendant of one of the hanged Indians. Erdrich manages to tack on an ending during which we find out who really killed the farm family. The town doctor's identity also furnishes a surprising twist.

I've been reading Ms. Erdrich for over 20 years now, and each time I pick up one of her books, I am amazed how consistent she is in her talent. As I've said in other reviews, she's created her own Yoknapatawpha County in North Dakota, peopled with her mixed ancestors, and continues to delight. The beautiful review above from the Washington Post lays out the story without any spoilers. Erdrich creates haunting novels woven together of seemingly disparate stories that coalese in the end to make a satisfying whole. Almost a web of short stories, but each involving and intriguing in its own right, necessary to the integrated whole.

I've devoured every one of the 13 books published by Louise Erdrich over the years. It's been almost three years since her last book, and The Plague of Doves is worth the wait.

The Plague of Doves takes place in and around the white town of Pluto, North Dakota, and moves back and forward in time. The closeness of Pluto to the Ojibwe reservation has, over the years, led to intermarriage and a complicated history between the whites and the Ojibwe.

Stories are a big part of Mooshum's life and one day he tells his grandchildren about an event that occurred in 1911. Four Indians were accused of brutally murdering a white family (only the infant daughter survived). A vigilante group rounded up the Indians, including Mooshum. Three of the Indians were hanged. Mooshum was the only person that survived. Despite the hangings, the murders have remained unsolved.

Over the years, the families of the posse and the Indians who were hanged become intertwinedâ"and it is that history that we hear in The Plague of Doves. The primary narrator is Evelina, Mooshum's granddaughter.

As the story proceeds, Erdrich gives us bits of information and a spectacular read where ultimately the identity of the killer is revealed.

The Plague of Doves is rich and complex. The plot is multi-layered and thus difficult to explain without revealing important plots points. My suggestion is that this is one of those books that must be read to be appreciated.

The Plague of Doves spans many years and in less capable hands would fall flat. But Erdrich is adept in managing all the information, tucking in the loose threads and weaving a story that is stunning in its exploration of history and how each person's individual history impacts and shapes the future.

Armchair Interviews says: A must read.

This book is my first by Louise Erdrich. While it is not written as a thrilling murder mystery, it does greatly hold one's interest in the telling about an unsolved murder of a farm family that haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The capture and punishment by hanging of three Indians, who were wrongly accused of the crimes, interweaves with the lives of everyone connected to these long ago murders and makes for a great Native American read.

I am a big Erdrich fan, but this is not my favorite. I have enjoyed her plot-driven novels such as "The Painted Drum" and "The Master Butcher's Singing Club" very much. I also enjoyed "Love Medicine," which is a set of stories, like "A Plague of Doves," that work as a novel. I had a hard time getting involved in this book. I found it a bit slow. I had to push myself through it. Reading the other reviews had me wondering if I had read the same book. I kept reading because I do love her writing.

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)

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.

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!

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 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

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 ironically, only an infant daughter, 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

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!