Four souls

Review by Booklist Review

This small but incredibly rich chapter in Erdrich's ongoing Native American saga is a continuation of the story of the enigmatic Fleur Pillager, begun in Tracks (1988). Such are Erdrich's storytelling skills that even readers unfamiliar with that book will immediately be drawn into this novel. The decimation of Ojibwe land continues unabated, but the implacable Fleur has decided to exact revenge on one John James Mauser, who has built his wealth by acquiring Ojibwe land through underhanded tactics. She is hired on at his mansion as a laundress, but her plan suffers a setback when she learns that he is ill with a severe muscle disorder; she sets about curing him so that she can wreck him while he is in good condition, but in a bizarre twist, her relationship with Mauser takes a very different turn. Narrated in alternating chapters by aged and comical wise man Nanapush; his visionary, stubborn wife, Margaret; and Mauser's spinster sister-in-law, the novel holds as its central theme the process of transformation, as each character is drawn toward healing and love in the most astonishing fashion. Effortlessly moving between the sacred and the profane, between grotesquerie and transcendence, Erdrich continues to spin her unique and compelling fiction. --Joanne Wilkinson Copyright 2004 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Fleur Pillager, one of Erdrich's most intriguing characters, embarks on a path of revenge in this continuation of the Ojibwe saga that began with Tracks. As a young woman, Fleur journeys from her native North Dakota to avenge the theft of her land. In Minneapolis, she locates the grand house of the thief: one John James Mauser, whom she plans to kill. But Fleur is patient and stealthy; she gets herself hired by Mauser's sister-in-law, Polly Elizabeth, as a laundress. Polly acts as the household manager, tending to the invalid Mauser as well as her sister, the flaky and frigid Placide. Fleur upends this domestic arrangement by ensnaring Mauser, who marries her in a desperate act of atonement. Revenge becomes complicated as Fleur herself suffers under its weight: she descends into alcoholism and gives birth to an autistic boy. In Erdrich's trademark style, chapters are narrated by alternating characters-in this case Polly Elizabeth, as well as Nanapush, the elderly man from Tracks, and his wife, Margaret. (Nanapush and Margaret's relationship, and the jealousies and revenge that ensue, play out as a parallel narrative.) More so than in other of Erdrich's books, this tale feels like an insider's experience: without the aid of jacket copy, new readers will have trouble feeling a sure sense of place and time. And Fleur herself-though fascinating-remains elusive. Nevertheless, the rich detail of Indian culture and community is engrossing, and Erdrich is deft (though never heavy-handed) in depicting the struggle to keep this culture alive in the face of North American "progress." The themes of fruitless revenge and redemption are strong here, especially when combined with the pull of her lyrical prose; Erdrich may not ensnare many new readers, but she will certainly satisfy her already significant audience. Agent, Andrew Wylie. (July 2) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Erdrich here returns to her fictional chronicle of modern Native American culture, as exemplified by generations of interrelated North Dakotans, picking up where she ended in Tracks (1988). Although it contains crossover characters and allusions to past events, this work may be read without consulting the earlier work. Taking place several years after World War I and narrated principally by tribal leader Nanapush and Polly Elizabeth, a white woman from the city, the plot focuses on beautiful Ojibwe mystic Fleur Pillager. Adopting the powerful secret name Four Souls, Fleur travels to the urban mansion of her people's great enemy, John Mauser, and plans his execution (first miraculously curing him of a wasting illness). But Fleur's control slips: her peculiar marriage to Mauser and a crippling addiction to alcohol put her on the road again, with a severely damaged son and just two possessions: a luxurious automobile and an exquisite suit. However, once she returns to Matchimanito's lakeshore, these are sufficient means for achieving a kind of triumph. Fleur's story, along with comic subplots involving the narrators, is marked by imagery both poetic and moving, if at times overwrought. Yet the beauty of Erdrich's writing compensates more than adequately for that minor flaw. Recommended for most collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 3/15/04.]-Starr E. Smith, Fairfax Cty. P.L., VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

The loss of ancestral lands and the revivifying power of traditions shape the dialectic that informs the latest in Erdrich's expanding Ojibwe saga (The Master Butchers Singing Club, 2003, etc.). This taut ninth installment focuses on characters initially fully developed in her third novel, Tracks (1988): austere, semi-legendary "medicine woman" Fleur Pillager and aging tribal chairman and inveterate lover of women Gerry Nanapush. The story of Fleur's journey from her North Dakota reservation to Minneapolis, to seek revenge against prosperous land baron John James Mauser (the man who stole her land), and its bizarre aftermath are told by three narrators. Fleur's stoicism and steely resolve are vividly evoked by Gerry, in a long conversation with her estranged daughter Lulu. Her decision to ruin Mauser by first healing his mysterious illness, then marrying him is described by Mauser's spinster sister-in-law Polly Elizabeth, who becomes Fleur's employer, then her devoted nurse and companion . And, late in the story, the details of Fleur's return to the reservation and arduous re-connection with "her neglected spirits" are related by Gerry's strong-willed common-law-wife Margaret Kashpaw, who loves, tolerates, browbeats, and outwits the misbehaving Gerry, while patiently assembling from hunted and found natural materials the "medicine dress" whose magical powers may permit Fleur reentry into the world she had abandoned. Four Souls (the name passed on to Fleur by her supernaturally empowered grandmother) feels a bit hurried and at times awkwardly focused. We lose sight of Fleur for some time while Gerry recalls his rivalry with neighbor and mortal enemy Shesheeb (who has an eye for Margaret). But the tale's swiftness has a pleasing rhythm, and Erdrich's double plot does skillfully link Gerry's embattled relationship with Margaret to Fleur's purification through anger, alcoholism, and suffering--accomplished not just with Margaret's aid but with that of the retarded, "unnamed" son she bore her enemy. A welcome addition, then, to a uniquely enthralling and important American story. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Four Souls A Novel Chapter One The Roads Nanapush Fleur took the small roads, the rutted paths through the woods traversing slough edge and heavy underbrush, trackless, unmapped, unknown and always bearing east. She took the roads that the deer took, trails that hadn't a name yet and stopped abruptly or petered out in useless ditch. She took the roads she had to make herself, chopping alder and flattening reeds. She crossed fields and skirted lakes, pulled her cart over farmland and pasture, heard the small clock and shift of her ancestors' bones when she halted, spent of all but the core of her spirit. Through rain she slept beneath the cart's bed. When the sun shone with slant warmth she rose and went on, kept walking until she came to the iron road. The road had two trails, parallel and slender. This was the path she had been looking for, the one she wanted. The man who had stolen her trees took this same way. She followed his tracks. She nailed tin grooves to the wheels of her cart and kept going on that road, taking one step and then the next step, and the next. She wore her makizinan to shreds, then stole a pair of boots off the porch of a farmhouse, strangling a fat dog to do it. She skinned the dog, boiled and ate it, leaving only the bones behind, sucked hollow. She dug cattails from the potholes and roasted the sweet root. She ate mud hens and snared muskrats, and still she traveled east. She traveled until the iron road met up with another, until the twin roads grew hot from the thunder and lightning of so many trains passing and she had to walk beside. The night before she reached the city the sky opened and it snowed. The ground wasn't frozen and her fire kept her warm. She thought hard. She found a tree and under it she buried the bones and the clan markers, tied a red prayer flag to the highest branches, and then slept beneath the tree. That was the night she took her mother's secret name to herself, named her spirit. Four Souls, she was called. She would need the name where she was going. The next morning, Fleur pushed the cart into heavy bramble and piled brush over to hide it. She washed herself in ditch water, braided her hair, and tied the braids together in a loop that hung down her back. She put on the one dress she had that wasn't ripped and torn, a quiet brown. And the heavy boots. A blanket for a shawl. Then she began to walk toward the city, carrying her bundle, thinking of the man who had taken her land and her trees. She was still following his trail. Far across the fields she could hear the city rumbling as she came near, breathing in and out like a great sleeping animal. The cold deepened. The rushing sound of wheels in slush made her dizzy, and the odor that poured, hot, from the doorways and windows and back porches caused her throat to shut. She sat down on a rock by the side of the road and ate the last pinch of pemmican from a sack at her waist. The familiar taste of the pounded weyass, the dried berries, nearly brought tears to her eyes. Exhaustion and longing filled her. She sang her mother's song, low, then louder, until her heart strengthened, and when she could feel her dead around her, gathering, she straightened her back. She kept on going, passed into the first whitened streets and on into the swirling heart of horns and traffic. The movement of mechanical, random things sickened her. The buildings upon buildings piled together shocked her eyes. The strange lack of plant growth confused her. The people stared through her as though she were invisible until she thought she was, and walked more easily then, just a cloud reflected in a stream. Below the heart of the city, where the stomach would be, strange meadows opened made of stuff clipped and green. For a long while she stood before a leafless box hedge, upset into a state of wonder at its square shape, amazed that it should grow in so unusual a fashion, its twigs gnarled in smooth planes. She looked up into the bank of stone walls, of brick houses and wooden curlicued porches that towered farther uphill. In the white distance one mansion shimmered, light glancing bold off its blank windowpanes and turrets and painted rails. Fleur blinked and passed her hand across her eyes. But then, behind the warm shadow of her fingers, she recovered her inner sight and slowly across her face there passed a haunted, white, wolf grin. Sometimes an old man doesn't know how he knows things. He can't remember where knowledge came from. Sometimes it is clear. Fleur told me all about this part of her life some years after she lived it. For the rest, though, my long talks with Father Damien resulted in a history of the great house that Fleur grinned up at that day. I pieced together the story of how it was formed. The priest and I sat long on the benches set against my little house, or at a slow fire, or even inside at the table carefully arranged on the linoleum floor over which Margaret got so particular. During those long conversations Father Damien and I exchanged rumors, word, and speculation about Fleur's life and about the great house where she went. What else did we have to talk about? The snow fell deep. The same people lived in the same old shacks here. Over endless games of cards or chess we amused ourselves by wondering about Fleur Pillager. For instance, we guessed that she followed her trees and, from that, we grew convinced that she was determined to cut down the man who took them. She had lived among those oak and pine trees when their roots grew deep beneath her and their leaves thick above. Four Souls A Novel . Copyright © by Louise Erdrich. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Four Souls: A Novel by Louise Erdrich All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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