No little horse, but a book review

For the third time in my life, I have fallen in love with Louise Erdrich.

First, I read Love Medicine and I thought “it can’t get better than this.”

Then I read Tracks and I thought “it can’t get better than this.”

Then I read The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse and, this time I had to be correct, it can’t get any better than this.

Louise Erdrich is a Native American author who writes about the people that live on a fictional reservation in North Dakota (among other things). Despite this Native American genre classification, Erdrich moves from the norms that populate the literature and, in doing so, her novels are able to reach out and touch anyone from any background.

In Little No Horse, we follow the travels of Father Damien, the priest of the reservation. Standing on the threshold of the novel, we look in and meet Father Damien. We the readers watch as Damien removes bandages from his chest. “His woman’s breasts were small, withered, modest as folded flowers.” In truth, Father Damien is Agnes Dewitt, a strong willed woman wooed by long dead composers and a passion for life.

We travel with Agnes through her early life in the church and her subsequent exit, her deep seated passion for Chopin, her first love, her first and second near-death experiences and her transformation into Father Damien. After molding into Damien, Agnes moves to the reservation and sets up shop as their priest, putting on the disguise in the morning and reverting to Agnes at night.

Thus, we follow Agnes as she learns the ways of men and integrates herself into reservation life. People come and people go throughout her life but there are a small few who make an impact and it is in these moments, and the ruminations thereafter, that we grasp the subtle depth of Agnes and how hard it is for her to not truly be herself most of the day. But then, what self is true? She feels at one with both Damien and Agnes, but the two can never meld.

Slowly, over the course of her life, she learns the language and the ways of the reservation and becomes so close to them that she questions her place in the Church. This love of the reservation and her belief that the people in it depend on her become at once a trial and a momentous occasion for Agnes. She loves being needed, but she must turn down opportunities to live a full life as Agnes outside because of it.

Throughout the long life of Agnes, we see several other beloved reservation staples like Nanapush, Lulu, Fleur and Leopolda come in and out of the picture. We garner more information about them to add to the stock from other novels and it is this interwoven fabric of Erdrich’s novels that I find most fascinating. Lulu, my all-time favorite character from the novels, appears throughout all three and, by piecing together different accounts and histories, I have her life unfolded before me to scrutinize and idolize.

Although Little No Horse is indisputably about Agnes, Lulu plays a huge role. In the novel, we are able to read an account straight from Lulu of her early life and this puts in perspective for us her actions later on. For most of the novel, she is a grown woman who Damien is simply smitten with fatherly love for. So smitten, in fact, that he mistakenly writes his name down for her fathers name on her birth certificate. Later, thinking his undoing is coming, this pops up from the past to save him.

Hardly known to him, this novel is secretly about Damiens saving. He battles everyday with trying to not be found out while finding a person here or a person there that really knows he’s a female. It seems to matter little to the reservation folk and they accept her into their reservation with open arms.