The Plague of Doves

There seems to be a little bit of everything in this novel that reads like a group of interrelated short stories. It starts with the massacre of a white family for which a group of innocent Native Americans is lynched by white men who seem to know they're innocent, but they're just angry (and drunk). Ensuing stories are told in the voices of people closely or very vaguely related to the original characters. Erdrich is able to convey families based on love and trust and those with neither, characters who make good decisions impulsively and those who make wise decisions that have disastrous consequences. The Native American concept of luck and the Trickster seem to play a large part in many stories. There are surprising twists and show more unexpected relationships, not the depth of surprise you'd get from a Dennis Lehane novel, but little eye openers nonetheless. The end is a little less than satisfying, but life doesn't always have a spectacular end, sometimes things just kind of slide around. show less

While I generally avoid "multi-generational sagas," I do admire the work of Louise Erdrich, so when I saw this one in the local thrift store, I grabbed it. And THE PLAGUE OF DOVES (2008) did not disappoint, although I'll admit sometimes being confused over who was related to whom at various times, especially when the chapters and characters leapt back and forth in times and settings. The novel opens with a gruesome, bloody mass murder near a North Dakota reservation, and it takes most of the three hundred-plus pages to discover whodunit and who survived. But the characters rule here, and there are plenty of them, beginning with young Evelina Milk, and her grandfather and great-uncle, Mooshum and Shamengwa, Ojibwe elders. And there is show more Billy Peace, a darkly sinister charismatic who grows up to found a cult and a commune. And Antone Bazil Coutts, a grave digger who carries on a longtime affair with an older, married woman before studying law and becoming a lawyer and judge specializing in tribal law. These are only a few of the fascinating denizens of Pluto, ND, and the nearby rez who populate the pages in a page-turning story of perseverance, murder and heartache that spans generations. This is Louise Erdrich at the peak of her storytelling powers. Very highly recommended.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER show less

This novel tells the story of several North Dakota families, mostly Native American, whose lives intersect because of a racially-motivated murder in the distant past. Louise Erdrich introduces multiple narrators, each with their own limited and biased point of view. While the story unfolds over multiple generations, the narrative is not chronological and time passes without specific references to anchor the story. This slow reveal feels similar to working a jigsaw puzzle as the reader figures out who is related to whom, and the overall sequence of events.

The novel is not a “whodunnit,” focusing instead on the murder’s ripple effect through subsequent generations. Some of those effects are well known in the community, and some are show more closely guarded secrets which come to light by the end of the novel. Coupled with Erdrich’s typically colorful cast of characters, this makes for great reading. show less

A horrific crime affects many in the small town of Pluto, North Dakota: first the murder of a family and second the murder of a group of Ojibwa accused of the crime. Now, as Evelina and her brother grow up and hear the story from their grandfather, a generation or two later families of the perpetrators and victims intertwine and are all affected, in some way, with the aftermath.

Told in multiple perspectives and covering several years - not counting the stories we're told of a generation or two ago - this is a complex read and one I would reread with a pen in hand to tease out the chronology and genealogy of various characters. It's thought-provoking, excellent storytelling.

The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich

"Nothing that happens, nothing, is not connected here by blood." So says Judge Antone Bazil Coutts, one of four narrators of Louise Erdrich's [The Plague of Doves], which is set in and around Pluto, North Dakota, an all-white town on the edge of an Indian reservation,

At the center of this tale, is an episode of "rough justice" following the brutal murders of almost an entire farm family. It happened in the early years of the twentieth century. The only survivor was an infant; her parents, sister, and two brothers were shot-gunned.

The murders were discovered by four Ojibwe Indians, drawn to the bawling of the family's cows, which hadn't been milked for several days and thus were suffering. They show more milked the cows, feeding the infant in the process. Knowing they would be accused of the crime, they left the baby in her crib and vanished, but one did, in the dead of night, leave a note in the sheriff's mailbox. In short order, the crime was discovered by the whites, and somehow the Indians quickly were rounded up. Seized from the sheriff's custody by the white community's bully-boys, they were lynched.

The story is told decades after the fact to Evelina Harp, another of the narrators, by Mooshum Milk, her grandfather. Mooshum is a full-blooded Ojibwa. As it happens, he was one of the four Indians hanged. The men who lynched them, however, didn't allow him to die.

Evelina is gobsmacked. Her mother, Moosum's daughter, and her father, the son of a local (failed) banker, have heard the story before, indeed they tried to dissuade its recital on this occasion. Evelina explains:

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…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. Still, I could not erase the questions underneath, and Mooshum was no help. He bore interrogation with a vexed wince and silence. I persisted, kept on asking for details, but answered in evasions, to get rid of me. He never spoke with the direct fluidity of that first telling. His medicine bottle, confiscated by our mother, had held whisky. No one knew from what source. She'd never get him to stop. I still loved Mooshum, of course, but with this tale something in my regard of him was disturbed, as if I'd stepped into a clear stream and silt had billowed up around my feet.

As the book progresses, Judge Coutts recounts the mid-winter expedition that sited Pluto, a brutal trek made by his grandfather and four local brothers, the Buckendorfs, led by two Ojibwas, Henri and Lafayette Peace. In time, the younger brother of Henri and Lafayette, Cuthbert Peace would be lynched by Emil Buckendorf (and others). And Sister Mary Anita Buckendorf, Evelina's elementary school teacher and grandaughter of Emil, will acknowledge that Mooshum was hanged, but not to kill him. "Yes, my dear," Mary Anita says. "Wildstrand cut him down at the last moment, yes…{T}hey never meant to hang him all the way. They wanted to terrify him, to intimidate him. A false hanging will do that."

Ultimately, the mystery is solved. It's an elaborate, multigenerational spider web. As the Judge pointed out: "Nothing that happens, nothing, is not connected here by blood."

Did I like it? Of course. Both thumbs up. show less

I feel like Louise Erdrich should be Canadian. Her stories about indigenous peoples could just as easily take place north of the border as south. I’m sure she would be welcomed with open arms in Canada but she seems content to live in Minneapolis where she operates a bookstore (some place I would love to explore).
This book concerns people in a fictitious North Dakota town called Pluto and the reservation nearby. Although the town has fallen on hard times it was once a place of promise. Some of the native people who came to this place were Metis who had supported Louis Riel but fled Canada after the Batoche battle failed. Some of the white people had counted upon the railroad running nearby and bought up the townsite. As might be show more expected there were tensions between the natives and the whites. When a farming family was slaughtered, except for a young baby girl, the whites assumed the natives had committed the crime. Three natives were lynched by the whites and that crime reverberated through the generations to come.
There are some wonderful characters in this book. Seraph Milk (Mooshum as he is called for most of the book) is an old man living with one of his daughters in town. He loves his little nips and he loves telling tales. His granddaughter Evelina has grown up listening to his stories and from what he has told her and what she has picked up from others she manages to piece together much of the area’s history. Seraph’s brother, Shamengwa, is a talented violin player. The story of how he acquired his violin is makes reading this book worthwhile all by itself.
The stories weave back and forth in time and from one teller to another. It’s like what I imagine sitting around a fire in a Plains Indian teepee must have been like. Highly recommended. show less

The Plague of Doves – Louise Eldritch
4 stars

Plague of Doves is multi-generational story about the lives of the citizens of Pluto, North Dakota.
In some ways the book is a series of short stories told in the individual voices of various characters. Each character tells of lives affected by a single horrific event; the unsolved murder of a farm family and its subsequent lynching. There are multiple storylines and it is difficult to follow the way in which each narrative is connected to all the others. Erdrich draws a complex picture of the growing ripple effect of this early tragedy through the intertwined lives of the Ojibwe and white members of this small community.

This is the second Erdrich book I’ve read and I think she’s become show more my favorite new discovery. Her characters live and breathe. There’s great richness in her description and metaphor. I love her comic timing.
The tragicomical brothers, Mooshum and Shamengwa, are like jesters in a Shakespearean play. There are so many layers in her writing that I want to go back to the beginning and read it again. Once I read it again to clear up references that I just didn’t get the first time around, I’ll probably want to add the last star to my rating. show less