"Where the reservation boundary invisibly bisected a stand of deep brush--choke-cherry, popple stunted oak--Landreaux waited. He said he was not drinking, and their was no sign later. Landreaux was a devout Catholic and who also followed the traditional ways, a man who would kill a deer, thank one God in English, and put down tobacco for another god in Ojibwe." So begins Louise Erdrich's novel LaRose it's the prelude to an event that determines the entire book, the final book of her trilogy that began with The Plague of Doves and was followed by The Roundhouse.
Erdrich, half German American and half Native American, is a gifted story teller and is the author of fifteen novels. The Round House won the National Book Award for fiction while The Plague of Doves was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.
All of her books are multi-layered, in fact Plague of Doves so beautifully complex I found it worth reading three times. I read it, and,sometime later it was chosen by my book club so I read it again. After the book club discussion I read it a third time. Perhaps LaRose is the least complicated of the three. Some charterers appear in all them all. For example Father Travis, the ex-Marine, has a significant role in all three. At the very end of LaRose he is reassigned and the name of his replacement is worth the price of the book.
LaRose is the most redemptive of the three and. while not exactly a happy ending, it is more hopeful than the first two, Certainly there is much in it that causes me to look forward to the discussion of it at book club. I give it five of five possible stars.
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