The Plague of Doves (story)

The word languorous comes to mind, Erdrich’s storytelling spins out a story a young girl heard once from her aged great grandfather and remembers later as an older woman. The story her great-grandfather liked to tell, the one about the biggest day in his life, when he tried to get rid of a plague of brown doves.

What I find fairly fascinating is that there is a character in this story named Junesse Malaterre, the narrator’s great grandmother. Junesse is shy and timid and the comparison with June Morrissey from Love Medicine is striking because June was the wild one. Considering that Erdrich’s fiction connects across books and stories, I wonder about the name Junesse.

I’ll also be very interested to see how Louise Erdrich turns this 5600 word story into a novel, and I’m excited to find out.

Reading “The Plague of Doves” renews a desire to go back and re-read Erdrich’s novels, from Love Medicine to The Painted Drum. I own them all, except for the most recent, I just need to take the time.

The Plague of Doves

According to my Local Library Louise Erdrich has a new novel coming out in May 2008 called The Plague of Doves. Neither Erdrich's website nor her bookstore's website (Birchbark Books in Minneapolis) mentions the forthcoming novel. Neither does the Birchbark Blog. Other than random searches, I'm not sure how I am to find advance information regarding my favorite author.

A quick google search finds an Erdrich short story of the same title published in The New Yorker in June 2004.

The story was collected in the 2006 O. Henry Prize Stories.

This is the first I have heard of the story. I’ll read it shortly.