The Plague of Doves

A Novel

By: Louise Erdrich

Narrated by: Peter Francis James, Kathleen McInerney

A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, The Plague of Doves—the first part of a loose trilogy that includes the National Book Award-winning The Round House and LaRose—is a gripping novel about a long-unsolved crime in a small North Dakota town and how, years later, the consequences are still being felt by the community and a nearby Native American reservation.

Though generations have passed, the town of Pluto continues to be haunted by the murder of a farm family. Evelina Harp—part Ojibwe, part white—is an ambitious young girl whose grandfather, a repository of family and tribal history, harbors knowledge of the violent past. And Judge Antone Bazil Coutts, who bears witness, understands the weight of historical injustice better than anyone. Through the distinct and winning voices of three unforgettable narrators, the collective stories of two interwoven communities ultimately come together to reveal a final wrenching truth.

Bestselling author Louise Erdrich delves into the fraught waters of historical injustice and the impact of secrets kept too long.

©2008 Louise Erdrich; (P)2008 HarperCollins Publishers

The Music

Taking an entire book to find the murderer. The different backgrounds of all the characters added to the suspense. The haunting refrains of the violin grabbed my heart strings. Beautiful!

Dense and Complex

Is there anything you would change about this book?

I have a lot of friends who are huge Erdrich fans but I am not. I wanted to like this as much as I liked The Master Butcher's Singing Club but it was simply to convoluted for me to follow. I listen to audio books because I do not have the time to read and maybe this would be better digested as the written word as opposed to the spoken word, I don't know. I tried but at three quarters of the way through, I decided to move on. I never finished it.

What do you think your next listen will be?

Still browsing.

What does Peter Francis James and Kathleen McInerney bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

I really appreciate the narrators of all the audio books - even when the book is less than enjoyable - the narration always seems great!

Did The Plague of Doves inspire you to do anything?

Stop listening to it.

Any additional comments?

None.

Fun read and went fast

It required/compelled my rapt attention to the different characters and the intricacies of the connections and relationships between them. Still I could hardly stop listening to all their intriguing and interesting stories and their relationships to each other all neatly revealed in the end.

Stunning and intricate!

Incredibly wonderfully woven intricate story of interconnected human lives. Great plot great, time spin. Captivating but with steady pace. One of those you are curious of next chapters but want the story never to end. The story is a whole alphabet. Closed clamp.

beautiful moments, but not Erdrich at her best

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

Erdrich's work is full of humor and wonderful vignettes. They are here, but in a narrative that is perhaps less cohesive than some of her others. If you are new to her work, I recommend Last Report on the Miracles of Little No Horse or The Round House -- even though the latter is somewhat atypical for her for having only one narrative perspective.

Did the narration match the pace of the story?

The narrators disappointed me a bit. McInerney's voice is high and girlish, which doesn't quite work for me as a narrator of this book. James is lugubrious.