After all, the family descends from an Indian agent who worked on the North Dakota Ojibwe reservation that is home to her mother's family. When a woman named Faye Travers is called upon to appraise the estate of a family in her small New Hampshire town, she isn't surprised to discover a forgotten cache of valuable Native American artifacts. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title. Through Faye, we experience her anguished relationship with a local sculptor who also mourns the loss of a daughter, and witness the life Faye has made alone with her mother, in the shadow of her sister's death.Įrdich poetically captures the intricate, transformative rhythms of human grief that these losses create within her characters with grace, wit, captivating prose and surprising beauty.

We hear the voice of Bernard Shaawano, an Ojibwe, who tells of how his grandfather created the drum after years of mourning his younger daughter's death and how it changes the paths of those who cross it. However, she is shocked when she finds a rare drum – particularly because without even touching the instrument she hears its deep resonant sound.įollowing the discovery, we trace the drum's passage both backwards and forwards in time.

When Faye Travers is sent to appraise a family estate in a small New Hampshire town and comes across a forgotten set of valuable Native American artefacts, she is not surprised by the discovery.

(Sept.From the winner of the National Book Award for Fiction, 2012 comes this elegantly crafted novel that explores the strange power that lost children exert on the memories of those they leave behind But even at low voltage, Erdrich crafts a provocative read elevated by beautiful imagery, as when children near death fly off like skeletal ravens. Despite her elegant story and luminous prose, many of the characters feel sketchy compared to Erdrich's previous titans, and several redemptions seem too pat. Gracefully weaving many threads, Erdrich details the multigenerational history surrounding the drum. The drum is revived, as are those around it. Under its spell, she secrets it away and eventually repatriates it to that reservation on the northern plains-the home of her grandmother.

Native American antiquities specialist Faye Travers, bereaved of her sister and father, ambivalently in love with a sculptor who has lost his wife and loses his daughter, stumbles onto a ceremonial drum when she handles the estate of John Jewett Tatro, whose grandfather was an agent at the Ojibwe reservation. Erdrich essays the grief that comes when the sins of parents become mortal for their children. , etc.), it departs from the concentrated vigor of her best work in its breadth of storytelling. Though Erdrich's latest lyrical novel returns to Ojibwe territory ( Four Souls

The painted drum erdrich