The Antelope Wife (24 page)
Have You Read?
More by Louise Erdrich
ROUND HOUSE
The revered author returns to the territory of her bestselling Pulitzer Prize finalist,
The Plague of Doves
, with this riveting, exquisitely told story of a boy on the cusp of manhood who seeks justice and understanding in the wake of a terrible crime that upends and forever transforms his family.
THE PLAGUE OF DOVES
The unsolved murder of a farm family still haunts the white small town of Pluto, North Dakota, generations after the vengeance exacted and the distortions of fact transformed the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation.
Part Ojibwe, part white, Evelina Harp is an ambitious young girl prone to falling hopelessly in love. Mooshum, Evelina’s grandfather, is a repository of family and tribal history with an all too intimate knowledge of the violent past. And Judge Antone Bazil Coutts, who bears witness, understands the weight of historical injustice better than anyone. Through the distinct and winning voices of three unforgettable narrators, the collective stories of two interwoven communities ultimately come together to reveal a final wrenching truth.
SHADOW TAG
When Irene America discovers that her artist husband, Gil, has been reading her diary, she begins a secret Blue Notebook, stashed securely in a safe-deposit box. There she records the truth about her life and marriage, while turning her Red Diary—hidden where Gil will find it— into a manipulative charade. As Irene and Gil fight to keep up appearances for their three children, their home becomes a place of increasing violence and secrecy. And Irene drifts into alcoholism, moving ever closer to the ultimate destruction of a relationship filled with shadowy need and strange ironies.
Alternating between Irene’s twin journals and an unflinching third-person narrative, Louise Erdrich’s
Shadow Tag
fearlessly explores the complex nature of love, the fluid boundaries of identity, and the anatomy of one family’s struggle for survival and redemption.
THE RED CONVERTIBLE
This unique volume brings together, for the first time, three decades of stories by one of the most innovative and exciting writers of our day.
Erdrich is a fearless and inventive writer. In her fictional world, the mystical can emerge from the everyday, the comic turn suddenly tragic, and violence and beauty inhabit a single emotional landscape. Each character in these stories is full of surprises, and the twists and leaps of Erdrich’s imagination are made all the more meaningful by the deeper truth of human feeling that underlies them.
In “Saint Marie,” the ardent longing that propels a fourteen-year-old Indian girl up the hill to the Sacred Heart Convent and into a life-and-death struggle with the diabolical Sister Leopolda fuels a story of breathtaking power and originality. “Knives” features a homely butcher’s assistant, a devoted reader of love stories, who falls for a good-looking predator, a traveling salesman, with devastating consequences for each of them. “Le Mooz” evokes the stinging flames of passion in old age— “Margaret had exhausted three husbands, and Nanapush had outlived his six wives”—with unexpected humor that turns suddenly bittersweet at the story’s close. A passion for music in “Naked Woman Playing Chopin” proves more powerful than any experience of carnal or spiritual love; indeed, when Agnes DeWitt removes her clothing to enter the music of a particular composer, she sweeps all before her and transcends mortality and time itself.
In
The Red Convertible
, readers can follow the evolution of narrative styles, the shifts and metamorphoses in Erdrich’s fiction, over the past thirty years. These stories, spellbinding in their boldness and beauty, are a stunning literary achievement.
“A wondrous short story writer . . . creating a keepsake of the American experience. . . . A master tuner of the taut emotions that keen between parent and child, man and woman, brother and sister, and man and beast.”
—Liesl Schillinger,
New York Times Book Review
THE PAINTED DRUM
While appraising the estate of a New Hampshire family descended from a North Dakota Indian agent, Faye Travers is startled to discover a rare moose skin and cedar drum fashioned long ago by an Ojibwe artisan. And so begins an illuminating journey both backward and forward in time, following the strange passage of a powerful yet delicate instrument, and revealing the extraordinary lives it has touched and defined.
Louise Erdrich’s
Painted Drum
explores the often fraught relationship between mothers and daughters, the strength of family, and the intricate rhythms of grief with all the grace, wit, and startling beauty that characterizes this acclaimed author’s finest work.
“With fearlessness and humility, in a narrative that flows more artfully than ever between destruction and rebirth, Erdrich has opened herself to possibilities beyond what we merely see—to the dead alive and busy, to the breath of trees and the souls of wolves— and inspires readers to open their hearts to these mysteries as well.”
—Washington Post Book World
FOUR SOULS
Fleur Pillager takes her mother’s name, Four Souls, for strength and walks from her Ojibwe reservation to the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. There she seeks restitution from and revenge on the lumber baron who has stripped her reservation. But revenge is never simple; her intentions are complicated by her dangerous compassion for the man who wronged her.
“Full of satisfying yet unexpected twists. . . .
Four Souls
begins with clean, spare prose but finishes in gorgeous incantations and poetry.”
—New York Times Book Review
THE MASTER BUTCHERS SINGING CLUB
Fidelis Waldvogel leaves behind his small German village in the quiet aftermath of World War I; he sets out for America with his new wife, Eva—the widow of his best friend, killed in action. Finally settling in North Dakota, Fidelis works hard to build a business, a home for his family, and a singing club consisting of the best voices in town. But his adventures in the New World truly begin when he encounters Delphine Watzka, a local woman whose origins are a mystery, even to herself. Delphine meets Eva and is enchanted; she meets Fidelis and the ground trembles. . . .
“An enrapturing plunge into the depths of the human heart.”
—Washington Post Book World
“[A] masterpiece. . . . Erdrich never hits a false note.”
—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
ORIGINAL FIRE: SELECTED AND NEW POEMS
