A Trip to Pluto

HarperCollins, 320 pp., April 29

Louise Erdrich’s new novel, The Plague of Doves, depicts the rise and fall of Pluto, N.D., a speck of a town near an Ojibwe reservation. We enter Pluto’s history through the eyes of young Evelina Harp, just as her grandfather decides she’s old enough to hear about the 1911 lynching of three men falsely accused of slaughtering a white family. Erdrich then shows generations of families in Pluto, who are either related to the mob, or know the true killer. Half the fun is learning who’s related, and how, and whether or not they know.

Erdrich sifts the complexity of these families’ lives to offer tender and terrible truths about what it means to be stuck every day facing such brutal history. Each character reveals secrets about the town’s past — from a kidnapping plot to a religious cult — and no one’s immune. As one character says, "[What] is the difference between the influence of instinct upon a wolf and history upon a man? In both cases, justice is prey to unknown dreams." Using a shifting perspective and multiple points of view, she delves into the minds of men and women, American Indian and white, giving each a distinct voice. They all ring so true individually that it’s amazing just one author created them all.

Whether describing pioneers curled together under buffalo skins during a blizzard, or the soulful power of violin music, or the way clouds stack before a thunderstorm, Erdrich’s lyricism propels the story. In rich and powerful language, she gives a beautifully honest account of the townspeople’s lust and mysticism, pain and bleak humor.

Reading this story yields more wisdom and poetic entertainment than classics twice its size. And on top of that, Erdrich tells who the real killer is, too.

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