Plague of Doves

A beautiful, compelling, utterly original new novel from one of the most important American writers of our time, and winner of the National Book Award for Fiction, 2012


Pluto, North Dakota, is a town on the verge of extinction. Here, everybody is connected – by love or friendship, by blood, and, most importantly, by the burden of a shared history.


Growing up on the reservation is Evelina Harp, witty and ambitious, and prone to falling hopelessly in love. Listening to her grandfather’s tales, she learns of a horrific crime that has marked both Ojibwe and whites. Nobody understands it better than Judge Antone Bazil Coutts, who keeps watch over Pluto’s inhabitants and recounts their lives with compassion and rare insight.


Louise Erdrich’s sense of the comic and the tragic sweeps 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.

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.

Format: Paperback
Pages: 356
Imprint: Harper Perennial
Publication date: 05/05/2008