Four Souls

by Louise Erdrich

Book Overview

From New York Times bestselling author Louise Erdrich comes a haunting novel that continues the rich and enthralling Ojibwe saga begun in her novel Tracks.

After taking her mother's name, Four Souls, for strength, the strange and compelling Fleur Pillager walks from her Ojibwe reservation to the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. She is seeking restitution from and revenge on the lumber baron who has stripped her tribe's land. But revenge...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060935227
• ISBN13: 9780060935221
• Release Date: July 2005
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 4.9" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

If you like and can understand Indian language

I honestly believe I purchased this book by mistake. I read it all the way through, but it was hard to follow at times. I had to make notes while I was reading and once I realized what was going on, it got a bit better for me. This book is about (History) Indians and how the white man tricked the Indians and took their land from them. One woman in particular, out smarted the white man and obtained her land and some Indian artifacts back by tricking him, just as all her ancestors were tricked. She pretended to be drunk and dumb. There are parts in the book where Indian language is spoken, half way through I was eager to read the outcome of it all.

A Great Story Told Well

Louise Erdrich is among my favorite authors. She weaves moving, human plots together with the intricacy of a well-told poem. Her landscapes make one gasp and her characters make one believe. So it is through this biased lens that I picked up Four Souls, read it, and also loved it. Fleur Pillager walks to Minneapolis to kill John James Mauser. That's the premise, but along the way she devises a punishment worse than death. See Mauser stole her family's land and clear cut the prized trees, leaving her family as poor as destitute as the rest of the Ojibwe in Northern Minnesota. What's her plan? Nurse Mauser back to health from his poison-gas induced illness and get him to fall in love with her. It's such an accomplished story told beautifully that I really can't add to it in a longer review without giving away more of its magic. Please, read this one, and Tracks the novel about Fleur Pillager that precedes it. - CV Rick, February 2008

Yet another stellar novel from Louise Erdrich

I've read most of the author's works and while I would not say this is my favorite, I have to say that she has matured so much as an author over the years that this is a must read book. I particularly like how she shares imagery and concepts in this book without feeling the need to explain them to the non-Anishinaabe audience, and potentially interrupting the poetry of the work itself. - It was amazing how she brought back to mind things I knew and had forgotten, simply through the force of her writing. The greatest impact for me was the effect the book had even 4 days later - the themes of this book are both universal and incredible. Thank you for such an outstanding book!

A Star Made From Love

From Fleur's amazing journey into and out of the whiteman's world, to the creation of a dress solely from nature's materials contrasted with the building of a house with materials obtained through greed, destruction and death, to the quest to find a name for a son's spirit: this book is radiant. It is a relatively short book, but it is full of the range of human emotions including the humor of love. Nanapush, the tribal leader yet also foolish husband,carefully painstakingly carves a star out of an old bean can in an attempt to hide from his wife, Margaret, a trail of errors. He tells her the star fell from the skies, through the roof and floor. "From outside, the sun, striking sudden from behind a cloud, then threw a fierce shaft of light in our direction. It slanted through the window and picked out the star in Margaret's hands. Marveling at it, she bent to examine it with a close eye. I smiled to see her, but the smile dropped off my face when with a huge gasp she squinted even closer and then slowly, slowly, with a dangerously changed expression held her miraculous find out to me. "Put on your spectacles, old liar",she said in a sofly changed voice. Immediately, I hooked them around my ears and in the burst of radiance I saw the raised letters I had missed in the tin, now the center of the star, which had marked the bottom of the can. Red Jacket Beans............................. I saw something building in her, something gathering, a storm , and my heart sank down into my feet. But when it came, it was not the bitter scorching, not the fire I feared. It was not the horror of sarcasm. Not the scrape of reproach. Margaret did something she had never done before in response to one of my idiot transgressions. Margaret laughed."

The spirit and history

There are very few novels written about Indians with actual Indian authors. I believe Louise Erdrich to be the best. She not only tells a story that is witty, powerful, and compelling, but she draws the reader into the mind and culture of Indians, especially of the Chippewa of whom she writes. Fred Manfred and Oliver LaFarge, to mention two, have written great novels about Indians; and certainly Tony Hillerman has given us insight into the religion and life styles of the Southwestern Indians, especially the Navajos, but these writers are still outsiders. Erdrich is lyrical and brilliant and tells her story as an insider without bias or sentimentality. This book and others of hers should be required reading by every student of American History. Facts about treaties and population may be interesting in their own way, but they don't say anything about the soul of a people.

Four Souls adds to the richness of Erdrich's world

Fleur Pillager is one of Louise Erdrich's legendary characters. Fleur is legendary within the world Erdrich has created as well as being an iconic character of Erdrich's work as a whole. "Four Souls" continues the story of Fleur that was begun in Erdrich's second novel "Tracks". Having lost her land to the white developers when Margaret Rushes Bear chose to use the money to save her own son Nector's piece of the land rather than Fleur's, Fleur Pillager walked away from the reservation. She walked until she was exhausted, and then she kept walking until she reached the Cities. She stopped, as if she was drawn, in front of a house that was hiring a cleaning woman. The house belonged to John James Mauser (a family name you should recognize from "Tales of Burning Love"). Mauser is the developer who purchased Fleur's land and she seeks to exact revenge on Mauser. Fleur's revenge is not the typical revenge where the person is quickly killed. No. Fleur's revenge has Fleur become part of the household so that she can build up Mauser enough that he can sufficiently know what he is going to lose when Fleur decides it is time to take her revenge. The novel is narrated by two characters. The first is the trickster, Nanapush. Nanapush tells the story of Fleur as he knows it (at no time is Fleur the narrator the story), so as he tells Fleur's story, he also tells his own. The other narrator is Polly Elizabeth Gheen. Polly Elizabeth is the sister of Mauser's wife. She is able to tell more of the story of Fleur's arrival to the household and what the impact there was. She also reveals a bit more of her family's history and that of Mauser's history. In Erdrich's world, everything is interconnected. I have to be upfront in saying that Louise Erdrich has long been my favorite author, and it is with great anticipation that I look forward to the publication of a new novel. "Four Souls" did not disappoint me. Rather than having a simple plot, Louise Erdrich and "Four Souls" tells a story of Fleur Pillager, of revenge (in many forms), of love, and Erdrich continues to craft out a world that feels very real. Each volume only serves to add to the richness and the color of The Little No Horse Reservation and the characters which inhabit and intersect with it. This is a very lyrical (and perhaps spiritual) story and while it may not be the type of story that every reader is looking for, it is one that I love. -Joe Sherry