A Great Story Told Well

Louise Erdrich is among my favorite authors.  She weaves moving, human plots together with the intricacy of a well-told poem.  Her landscapes make one gasp and her characters make one believe.  So it is through this biased lens that I picked up Four Souls, read it, and also loved it.

Fleur Pillager walks to Minneapolis to kill John James Mauser.  That's the premise, but along the way she devises a punishment worse than death. See Mauser stole her family's land and clear cut the prized trees, leaving her family as poor as destitute as the rest of the Ojibwe in Northern Minnesota.  What's her plan?  Nurse Mauser back to health from his poison-gas induced illness and get him to fall in love with her.

It's such an accomplished story told beautifully that I really can't add to it in a longer review without giving away more of its magic. Please, read this one, and Tracks the novel about Fleur Pillager that precedes it.

- CV Rick, February 2008