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When The Plague of Doves was released in May, I knew I was in for some wonderful hours of reading. Erdrich is a favorite author of mine whose writing life has generated a grand collection of published works,several volumes of poetry, numerous Children's books, and 12 novels. Having already read 4 of her previous works - Love Medicine, which won the National Book Critic's Circle Award in 1982, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, a finalist for the National Book Award in 2001, The Master Butcher's Singing Club, and her last book, The Painted Drum, I knew that "Doves" would probably be great, but was still impressed that once again I fell deep and fast into the vortex of this amazing storyteller. There is a mystery at the heart of the novel which is based on a real incident in North Dakota's history. Erdrich names the town Pluto in her book, where the accidental discovery of a murdered white family by a group of Native Americans, quickly leads to their lynching. Both tragedies are linked to the multiple family lines in the region. Erdrich reveals the strands of this history incrementally and in this revealing also provide a number of other grand story lines of the love, losses, and significant personal moments that give this community a rich history and unique personality. The Plague of Doves, embodies the qualities that continue to bring me back to her work and pine for more - her boundless imagination, the manner in which she weaves a powerful unifying storyline out of multiple voices across generations, her absolutely delightful and unexpected humor which rear up at the most tragic of moments, her gorgeous descriptions of moment and thought, her poetic and razor sharp incites on life. The Plague of Doves truly elevates Erdrich's talent as a storyteller. The novel is absolutely hypnotic. I have to admit that I enjoyed it so much I read the book twice!!

Louise Erdrich's mesmerizing new novel, her first in almost three years, centers on a compelling mystery. The unsolved murder of a farm family haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The vengeance exacted for this crime and the subsequent distortions of truth transform the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation and shape the passions of both communities for the next generation. The descendants of Ojibwe and white intermarry, their lives intertwine; only the youngest generation, of mixed blood, remains unaware of the role the past continues to play in their lives.

Evelina Harp is a witty, ambitious young girl, part Ojibwe, part white, who is prone to falling hopelessly in love. Mooshum, Evelina's grandfather, is a seductive storyteller, a repository of family and tribal history with an all-too-intimate knowledge of the violent past. Nobody understands the weight of historical injustice better than Judge Antone Bazil Coutts, a thoughtful mixed blood who witnesses the lives of those who appear before him, and whose own love life reflects the entire history of the territory. In distinct and winning voices, Erdrich's narrators unravel the stories of different generations and families in this corner of North Dakota. Bound by love, torn by history, the two communities' collective stories finally come together in a wrenching truth revealed in the novel's final pages.

The Plague of Doves is one of the major achievements of Louise Erdrich's considerable oeuvre, a quintessentially American story and the most complex and original of her books.

Louise Erdrich lives with her family and their dogs in Minnesota. Ms. Erdrich is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. She grew up in North Dakota and is of German-American and Chippewa descent. She is the author of many critically acclaimed and New York Times best-selling novels for adults, including Love Medicine, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and her latest novel The Plague of Doves, also published by HarperCollins.

The Porcupine Year continues the story that began with The Birchbark House, a National Book Award finalist, and The Game of Silence, winner of the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, and was inspired when Ms. Erdrich and her mother, Rita Gourneau Erdrich, were researching their own family history.

320 pages