Note: This novel was a FINALIST for the Pulitzer Prize, 2009.
(Reviewed MAY 10, 2008)
“[Mooshum's story of the murders and then the lynchings] had its repercussions—the first being that I [Evelina] could not look at anyone in quite the same way anymore. I became obsessed with lineage…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. Still I could not erase the questions underneath, and Mooshum was no help.”
When Seraph Milk, known as Mooshum to his young granddaughter Evelina, haltingly describes to her 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 Ojibwa 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, while ironically, an infant daughter, overlooked by the murderers, survived the Lochren massacre. As Mooshum narrates his tale, Evelina is stunned, noting that “It was like he was stuck in some way, on some track, like he couldn’t stop the story from forcing its way out.”
The murder and lunchings reverberate through all the relationships within both the Indian and white communities here, connecting the characters for almost one hundred years during the course of this novel. Erdrich is at her best here, telling 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.
The town of Pluto–mostly German and Norwegian, originally–has developed on the edge of reservation land, and as time passes, many surprising intermarriages take place among the families who have been most affected by the massacre and the “rough justice” of its aftermath. As individual courtship stories are told, and as the various narrators reflect their own connections to the town and to each other, the character of Pluto is seen changing and broadening, and Erdrich’s themes emerge. Members of the Milk, Harp, Peace, Coutts, Wildstrand, and Buchendorf families weave their way through the tales told by three interconnected generations during the novel, until their relationships are so entangled that everyone in Pluto is part of the history of everyone else—related by blood and the past. “Nothing that happens,” one character observes, “nothing, is not connected here by blood.”
Beginning in the early part of the twentieth century with the “plague of doves,” the repeated attack each year by hundreds of thousands of doves, which have to be driven off the land to protect newly planted seed, Erdrich describes the uniting of the 
community on the reservation—in this case, to “pray away” the doves and clear the fields. Common goals, common traditions, and common history show the vibrant local Chippewa community which is threatened by the building of the town of Pluto. An influx of white residents, many of whom resent the very people on whose land they are building their town, has exposed the Native American community to danger, the lynchings in the aftermath of the Lochren murders being only one part of it. Intermarriages represent a more long-term danger, and white priests and the Christian church erode the traditional spiritual beliefs. As residents gradually begin to move from the reservation community to the town, seeking opportunities, the old traditions become weaker, and by the end of three or four generations, the young people, often of mixed blood, are seeking even “better” opportunities in the world beyond Pluto.
Filling her novel with vibrant characters who share 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 actually consider becoming priests. Evelina, the third generation, looks for answers, not in religion, but in psychology and love. Another young man Evelina’s age, having tried kidnapping as an activity, becomes an evangelical preacher with a large commune and a snake-handling wife. Though the past and tradition exert their influence, they becomes less important to subsequent generations, who become selective of the past while looking toward the future, and by the end of the novel, “the dead of Pluto now outnumber the living.” 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.
Also by Louise Erdrich: LOVE MEDICINE , THE PAINTED DRUM, and SHADOW TAG.
Note: Louise Erdrich is a Native American author (Chippewa/Ojibwe), whose Wiki page is here.
Note: The author’s photo is from her HarperCollins author page.
