The Antelope Wife (25 page)

In this important new collection, her first in fourteen years, Louise Erdrich has selected poems from her two previous books of poetry (
Jacklight
and
Baptism of Desire
) and added new poems to create
Original Fire.

This profound and accessible collection anticipates and enlarges upon many of the themes, and even the characters, of Erdrich’s prose. A sequence of story poems called “The Potchikoo Stories” recounts the life and afterlife of the questing trickster Potchikoo; here, Erdrich echoes the wit and humanity of the inimitable Nanapush, who appears in several of her novels. Similarly, the group of poems called “The Butcher’s Wife” contains the germ of Erdrich’s novel
The Master Butchers Singing Club.

THE LAST REPORT ON THE MIRACLES AT LITTLE NO HORSE

A finalist for the National Book Award,
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse
tells the story of Father Damien Modeste, who for more than half a century has served his beloved people, the Ojibwe, on the remote reservation of Little No Horse. Now, nearing the end of his life, he dreads the discovery of his physical identity, for he is a woman who has lived as a man. To complicate his fears, Father Damien’s quiet life changes when a troubled colleague comes to the reservation to investigate the life of a perplexing, difficult, possibly false saint, Sister Leopolda. Father Damien alone knows the strange truth of Sister Leopolda’s piety and is faced with the most difficult decision of his life: Should he reveal all that he knows and risk everything? Or should he manufacture a protective history though he believes Leopolda’s wonder-working is motivated by evil?

“A deeply affecting narrative. . . . Ms. Erdrich uses her remarkable storytelling gifts to endow it with both emotional immediacy and the timeless power of fable. . . . By turns comical and tragic, the stories span the history of this Ojibwe tribe and its members’ wrestlings with time and change and loss.”

—
Michiko Kakutani,
New York Times

THE ANTELOPE WIFE

When a powwow trader kidnaps a strange and silent young woman from a Native American camp and brings her back to live with him as his wife, connections to the past rear up to confront an urban community. Soon the patterns of people’s ancestors begin to repeat themselves with consequences both tragic and ridiculous.

“Spiritual yet pragmatic, Erdrich’s deft lyricism affirms while it defies the usual lines separating the mythical from the daily. Erdrich leads every event in her book to its outer limits, so no detail is mundane. And each scene contains bits of hilarity, extravagance, and horror.”

—Boston Globe Sunday Magazine

TALES OF BURNING LOVE

Jack Mauser has women problems; he’s been married five times and none of his wives really know him. This becomes strikingly apparent when all his wives, marooned in the same snowbound car, start to tell stories about their onetime husband. He’s a man with a talent for reinvention and a less than circumspect regard for the truth. But as the women talk, their stories begin to revive them; they start thinking about Jack in a whole new light.

“Erdrich’s finest novel in years. . . . Shockingly beautiful prose.”

—San Francisco Chronicle

THE BLUE JAY’S DANCE: A BIRTH YEAR (nonfiction)

The Blue Jay’s Dance
is a poetic meditation on what it means to be a mother. Describing her pregnancy and the birth of her child, Erdrich charts the weather outside her window and the moods inside her heart. It is, she says, “a book of conflict, a book of babyhood, a book about luck, cats, a writing life, wild places in the world, and my husband’s cooking. It is a book about the vitality between mothers and infants, that passionate and artful bond into which we pour the direct expression of our being.”

“The language in this book is stunning, elastic, often full of silence. . . . Erdrich is forthright and tough-minded in her intentions, generous in her speculations, and courageous in her vulnerability before her readers.
The Blue Jay’s Dance
is a book that breaks ground.”

—Boston Globe

THE BINGO PALACE

Seeking direction and enlightenment, charismatic young drifter Lipsha Morrissey answers his grandmother’s summons to return to his birthplace. As he tries to settle into a challenging new job on the reservation, Lipsha falls passionately in love for the first time. But the object of his affection, the beautiful Shawnee Ray, is in the midst of deciding whether to marry Lipsha’s boss, Lyman Lamartine. Matters are further complicated when Lipsha discovers that Lyman, in league with an influential group of aggressive businessmen, has chosen to open a gambling complex on reservation land—a development that threatens to destroy the community’s fundamental links with the past.

“Beautiful. . . .
The Bingo Palace
shows us a place where love, fate, and chance are woven together like a braid, a world where daily life is enriched by a powerful spiritual presence.”

—New York Times

THE CROWN OF COLUMBUS (cowritten with Michael Dorris)

A gripping novel of history, suspense, recovery, and new beginnings,
The Crown of Columbus
chronicles the adventures of a pair of mismatched lovers—Vivian Twostar, a divorced, pregnant anthropologist, and Roger Williams, a consummate academic, epic poet, and bewildered father of Vivian’s baby—on their quest for the truth about Christopher Columbus and themselves. When Vivian uncovers what is presumed to be the lost diary of Christopher Columbus, she and Roger are drawn into a journey from icy New Hampshire to the idyllic Caribbean in search of “the greatest treasure of Europe.” Lured by the wild promise of redeeming the past, they are plunged into a harrowing race against time and death that threatens—and finally changes—their lives. A rollicking tale of adventure,
The Crown of Columbus
is also a contemporary love story and a tender examination of parenthood and passion.

“The rare novel that is both literature and good fun.”

—Barbara Kingsolver

TRACKS

“We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall.” So begins Nanapush as he recalls the winter of 1912, when consumption wiped out whole families of Ojibwe. But the magnificent Fleur Pillager refuses to be done away with; she drowns twice in Lake Matchimanito but returns to life to bedevil her enemies using the strength of the black underwaters. This is a book about love, loss, endurance, and survival.