The Plague of Doves

The central plot of The Plague of Doves revolves around an act of racism that took place in the early 20th century.[1] Peter G. Beidler outlines how Louise Erdrich's plot for the novel was influenced by real-life events that happened in North Dakota in the late 1890s.[3] As Beidler explains, a white family, the Spicers, were murdered by a group of Native Americans. While the murderers were tried and sentenced to death for their crimes, the citizens of the town believed the three witnesses, also Native Americans, were guilty as well.[3] Nine months after the trial, the citizens stormed the jailhouse where the men were being held, overpowered the guards, and proceeded to hang the three men in question.[3] One of the men was a 19-year-old boy named Paul Holy Track, believed to be the direct influence for Erdrich's character, the thirteen-year-old Holy Track.[3][1]

• Evelina Harp: The novel's first named narrator. She matures throughout the novel while exploring notions of bisexuality and uncovering Pluto's past.[1]
• Mooshum/ Seraph Milk: Evelina's grandfather who tells her about the reservation's past.[1]
• Shamengwa: Mooshum's brother. He is a violinist with a crippled arm who later tutors Corwin Peace.[1]
• Judge Antone Bazil Coutts: The tribal judge. He is the novel's second narrator. He has an affair with Dr. Cordelia Lochren.[1]
• Corwin Peace: Evelina's elementary school crush. He is a mischievous delinquent born out of wedlock, and he matures under Shamengwa's tutelage.[1]
• Billy Peace: Marn Wolde's husband with familial connections to the area's past. He becomes a spiritual leader to his family and the community.[1]
• Marn Wolde: Billy Peace's wife. She is the novel's third narrator. She seeks eccentric spirituality to escape her self-described prison.[1]
• Uncle Warren Wolde: Marn Wolde's uncle. He is a senile man in a mental hospital whose past actions have shaped the entire town.[1]
• Dr. Cordelia Lochren: The novel's last narrator. She is the surviving child of a family massacre; she harbors prejudices in her later years.[1]

The novel begins with a family's grisly murder resulting in a baby being the only surviving member.[1] A lynch mob blames four innocent Ojibwe people from the nearby reservation and hangs three of them, including a boy named Holy Track.

Years later, a young girl named Evelina, who struggles with her sexuality in grade school, listens to her grandfather's, Mooshum's, tales of Pluto, North Dakota's past.[1] In 1896, a flock of doves terrorized the town and the people within it.[1] Mooshum also explains how he was the only surviving member of the lynch mob.[1] This trauma caused Mooshum to flee the town for years before returning to the reservation, married and ready to start a family.[1] Upon returning, Mooshum and his brother, Shamengwa, develop an alcohol dependency.[1] These tales leave Evelina with more questions than answers, and Mooshum is hesitant to divulge everything.[1] Evelina is nervous to express the attraction she has for both her teacher and her classmate.[1]

Next enters Billy Peace, whose sister is having an affair with John Wildstrand. John is married to Neve Harp, the woman who rejected Mooshum's romantic advances. The affair between John Wildstrand and Billy Peace’s sister results in a child out of wedlock.[1] After the kidnapping of Neve Harp backfires, he goes to join the army.[1] The army is Billy's introduction to religion.[1] When Billy returns home, he starts a church.[1] Billy marries Marn Wolde as both bond over running away from past issues.[1] Marn becomes increasingly unhappy in her marriage and with the way Billy disciplines their children and how he interacts with her.[1] Eventually, Marn murders her husband and flees Pluto with her children in tow.[1]

An older Evelina, now working at a diner, runs into Marn.[1] The interaction recalls Evelina's former attractions to Marn's nephew.[1] Evelina is also provided with information from her former crush and teacher that causes her to suffer mentally.[1] While at the mental hospital, Evelina meets with patients but takes note of the weird actions of one in particular named Warren Wolde.[1] Warren Wolde dies in the hospital after hearing Corwin Peace play the violin while visiting Evelina.[1] Warren's death unravels some of the town's hidden mystery.[1]

At the time of its release, The Plague of Doves received many favorable reviews[6] that often deemed it a challenging, and multilayered book. The novel was named a “Best Book of The Year” by The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, and The Christian Science Monitor.[1]

In a review from The New York Times, Bruce Barcott notes that Erdrich created “an often gorgeous, sometimes maddeningly opaque portrait of a community strangled by its own history.”[4] In another The New York Times review, Michiko Kakutani states that Erdrich "uses several characters to narrate alternating chapters, giving us a choral story that unfolds from multiple perspectives."[7] Writing for The Los Angeles Times, Brigette Frase described how "Erdrich moves seamlessly from grief to sexual ecstasy, from comedy (Mooshum’s proof of the nonexistence of hell is priceless) to tragedy, from richly layered observations of nature and human nature to magical realism. She is less storyteller than medium. One has the sense that voices and events pour into her and reemerge with crackling intensity, as keening music trembling between sorrow and joy."[8]

Additionally, the book was also selected as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2009. In the same year, the novel also won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, which is awarded to books that have made a vital contribution to understanding racism and human diversity.[9]