Louise Erdrich's mesmerizing new novel, her first in almost three years, centers on a compelling mystery. The unsolved murder of a farm family haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The vengeance exacted for this crime and the subsequent distortions of truth transform the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation and shape the passions of both communities for the next generation. The descendants of Ojibwe and white intermarry, their lives intertwine; only the youngest generation, of mixed blood, remains unaware of the role the past continues to play in their lives. Evelina Harp is a witty, ambitious young girl, part Ojibwe, part white, who is prone to falling hopelessly in love. Mooshum, Evelina's grandfather, is a seductive storyteller, a repository of family and tribal history with an all-too-intimate knowledge of the violent past. Nobody understands the weight of historical injustice better than Judge Antone Bazil Coutts, a thoughtful mixed blood who witnesses the lives of those who appear before him, and whose own love life reflects the entire history of the territory. In distinct and winning voices, Erdrich's narrators unravel the stories of different generations and families in this corner of North Dakota. Bound by love, torn by history, the two communities' collective stories finally come together in a wrenching truth revealed in the novel's final pages. "The Plague of Doves" is one of the major achievements of Louise Erdrich's considerable oeuvre, a quintessentially American story and the most complex and original of her books.

路易丝•厄德里克（Louise Erdrich, 1954—）

诗人、小说家，生于美国明尼苏达州，父亲是德裔美国人，母亲是印第安人（奥吉布瓦族），外祖父曾任部落酋长。厄德里克大器早成，是美国当代最多产、最活跃、最有成就的作家之一，是美国印第安文艺复兴运动第二次大潮的代表人物。曾获美国全国图书奖、全国书评家协会奖（1984、2016）、美国国会图书馆小说奖、纳尔逊•阿尔格伦短篇小说奖、《洛杉矶时报》小说奖等文学大奖，入围普利策小说奖，七次荣膺欧•亨利短篇小说奖。她已出版了二十余部作品，被收入多部文学选集。