The Plague of Doves - Softcover

Erdrich, Louise

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007270763 ISBN 13: 9780007270767

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2008

Synopsis

A beautiful, compelling, utterly original new novel from one of the most important American writers of our time, and winner of the National Book Award for Fiction, 2012

Pluto, North Dakota, is a town on the verge of extinction. Here, everybody is connected – by love or friendship, by blood, and, most importantly, by the burden of a shared history.

Growing up on the reservation is Evelina Harp, witty and ambitious, and prone to falling hopelessly in love. Listening to her grandfather's tales, she learns of a horrific crime that has marked both Ojibwe and whites. Nobody understands it better than Judge Antone Bazil Coutts, who keeps watch over Pluto's inhabitants and recounts their lives with compassion and rare insight.

Louise Erdrich's sense of the comic and the tragic sweeps readers along to the surprising conclusion of this stunning novel, a portrait of the complex allegiances, passions and drama of a haunting land and its all-too-human people.

About this title

Review:

‘Louise Erdrich’s imaginative freedom has reached its zenith – ‘The Plague of Doves’ is her dazzling masterpiece.’ Philip Roth

'A masterly new novel ... Writing in prose that combines the magical sleight of hand of Gabriel Garcia Marquez with the earthy, American rhythms of Faulkner, Ms. Erdrich ... has written what is arguably her most ambitious – and in many ways, her most deeply affecting – work yet.' Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

‘Confirms her reputation as a writer able to combine the apocalyptic with the mundane world whose inhabitants are set loose to roam the heavens in spirit but are ballasted always by their defiantly human bodies.' Observer

'You could read Louise Erdrich's latest book for its wisdom ... Or you could read ‘The Plague of Doves’ for its poetry ... in the end, you’ll read this book for its stories ... The stories told by her characters offer pleasures of language, of humor, of sheer narrative momentum, that shine even in the darkest moments of the book.' Boston Globe

'Wholly felt and exquisitely rendered tales of memory and magic ... By the novel’s end, and in classic Erdrich fashion, every luminous fragment has been assembled into an intricate tapestry that deeply satisfies the mind, the heart, and the spirit.' O magazine

Synopsis:

A beautiful, compelling, utterly original new novel from one of the most important American writers of our time. Pluto, North Dakota, is a town on the verge of extinction. Its unsavory origins -- which lie in white greed -- contain the seeds of its demise. Here, everybody is connected -- by love or friendship, by blood, and, most importantly, by the burden of a shared history. Evelina Harp, a witty, ambitious young girl, part Ojibwe, part white, is growing up on the reservation. She is prone to falling hopelessly in love, most notably with her cousin, Corwin Peace, a misfit with a late-discovered talent for music, and then with her teacher, Sister Maria Anita Buckendorf, a godzilla-like nun whose frank acceptance of herself is irresistible. Mooshum, Evelina's grandfather, is a seductive storyteller, a repository of family and tribal history; listening enraptured to his tales Evelina learns of a horrific crime that has marked both Ojibwe and whites, whose fates have been inextricably bound ever since.Nobody understands the weight of that crime better than Judge Antone Bazil Coutts, a half breed from Pluto, who also suffers from pains in the love department; as a judge on the reservation, he keeps watch over its inhabitants and recounts their lives with compassion and rare insight.

In distinct and winning voices, Evelina and Judge Coutts unravel the intertwining stories of their families, their friends, and their lovers, the descendents of both the perpetrators and victims of the historic crime. Louise Erdrich's characteristically graceful prose and sense of the comic and the tragic sweep readers along to the surprising conclusion of this stunning novel, a portrait of the complex allegiances, passions, and drama of a haunting land and its all-too-human people.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0007270763
• ISBN 13: 9780007270767
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 356