"The Plague of Doves" by Louise Erdrich

Our 3RD book discussion will be on Thursday, June 9th @ Thomas Branigan Library @ 2:00pm.  If you are interested in joining in our book discussion, please email library.reference@las-cruces.org

Summary 
Louise Erdrich's mesmerizing novel, 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. (From the publisher.)

http://www.litlovers.com/reading-guides/13-fiction/790-plague-of-doves-erdrich?showall=1

Discussion Questions 
1. Spirituality is a powerful theme in the book. What might be the symbolic meaning of the doves? Do you see them as Christian messengers, or (given that they're not white) do they represent a Chippewa heaven?

2. You might talk about the different kinds of spirituality as they compete for the human soul. Also, think about how sexuality is treated differently in the Chippewa and Christian religious traditions.

3. Another theme is the land—the Chippewa's ties to and identification with the land and their dispossession from it. Despite her dreams of Paris, Evelina comes to understand that her identity is tied up with her tribe's loss of their land.

4. Storytelling is a structural device Erdrich uses in the novel as a way to bind past and present—as well as a way to evoke Chippewa traditions and way of life. Do the stories enlarge your understanding of the novel or do you feel they are a distraction? Or what?

5. How does your understanding of Mooshum change by the end of the book?

http://www.litlovers.com/reading-guides/13-fiction/790-plague-of-doves-erdrich?start=3