A beautiful, compelling, utterly original new novel from one of the most important American writers of our time. Pluto, North Dakota, is a town on the verge of extinction. Its unsavory origins -- which lie in white greed -- contain the seeds of its demise. Here, everybody is connected -- by love or friendship, by blood, and, most importantly, by the burden of a shared history. Evelina Harp, a witty, ambitious young girl, part Ojibwe, part white, is growing up on the reservation. She is prone to falling hopelessly in love, most notably with her cousin, Corwin Peace, a misfit with a late-discovered talent for music, and then with her teacher, Sister Maria Anita Buckendorf, a godzilla-like nun whose frank acceptance of herself is irresistible. Mooshum, Evelina's grandfather, is a seductive storyteller, a repository of family and tribal history; listening enraptured to his tales Evelina learns of a horrific crime that has marked both Ojibwe and whites, whose fates have been inextricably bound ever since. Nobody understands the weight of that crime better than Judge Antone Bazil Coutts, a half breed from Pluto, who also suffers from pains in the love department; as a judge on the reservation, he keeps watch over its inhabitants and recounts their lives with compassion and rare insight. In distinct and winning voices, Evelina and Judge Coutts unravel the intertwining stories of their families, their friends, and their lovers, the descendents of both the perpetrators and victims of the historic crime. Louise Erdrich's characteristically graceful prose and sense of the comic and the tragic sweep readers along to the surprising conclusion of this stunning novel, a portrait of the complex allegiances, passions, and drama of a haunting land and its all-too-human people.

路易絲•厄德裏剋（Louise Erdrich, 1954—）

詩人、小說傢，生於美國明尼蘇達州，父親是德裔美國人，母親是印第安人（奧吉布瓦族），外祖父曾任部落酋長。厄德裏剋大器早成，是美國當代最多産、最活躍、最有成就的作傢之一，是美國印第安文藝復興運動第二次大潮的代錶人物。曾獲美國全國圖書奬、全國書評傢協會奬（1984、2016）、美國國會圖書館小說奬、納爾遜•阿爾格倫短篇小說奬、《洛杉磯時報》小說奬等文學大奬，入圍普利策小說奬，七次榮膺歐•亨利短篇小說奬。她已齣版瞭二十餘部作品，被收入多部文學選集。