![]() ![]() Holding on is all but impossible, though-for there is no food: the Chippewa are dying like flies, and pittances matter. Two narrators hold sway here: one is Nanapush-an old but still sapid man, in touch with the throngs of dead all around him in the woods near the sacred lake Matchimanito (the most striking poetry of the ever-lyrically inventive Erdrich is this book's frequent and moving invocation of the spirits as milling within sight of the living-a seamlessness of states), and desperately trying to hold on before the lumber interests come and buy his land for nothing from him. It's at a period (1912-24) that sees the death knell of their most natural Indian identity, thanks to famine and economic rapaciousness and the pressures of missionary Christianity. ![]() ![]() Erdrich keeps to her cast of rich Chippewa characters here-Pillagers, Kashpawa, Lazarres: familiar to readers of both Love Medicine and The Beet Queen-but has placed them chronologically before the setting of those other novels. ![]()
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