The Plague of Doves

~ ~ ~

THANK YOU: Terry Karten, this book’s editor; Trent Duffy, this book’s copy editor; Deborah Treisman; Jane Beirn; and Andrew Wylie. Thanks also to Sandeep Platel, M.D.

The author gratefully acknowledges the editors of the magazines and anthologies in which parts of this novel have appeared in different form: “The Plague of Doves,” The New Yorker and The O. Henry Prize Stories 2006; “Sister Godzilla,” The Atlantic Monthly; “Shamengwa,” The New Yorker and The Best American Short Stories 2003; “Town Fever,” North Dakota Quarterly; “Come In” (as “Gleason”), The New Yorker and The Best American Mystery Stories 2007; “Satan: Hijacker of a Planet,” The Atlantic Monthly and Prize Stories 1998: The O. Henry Awards; “The Reptile Garden” and “Demolition,” The New Yorker; and “Disaster Stamps of Pluto,” The New Yorker and The Best American Mystery Stories of 2005.

As in all of Louise Erdrich’s books, the reservation, towns, and people depicted are imagined places and characters, with these exceptions: Louis Riel, and also the name Holy Track. In 1897, at the age of thirteen, Paul Holy Track was hanged by a mob in Emmons County, North Dakota. The section “Town Fever” draws upon a Red River town-site speculation in 1857 by Daniel S. B. Johnston.

Any mistakes in the Ojibwe or Michif language are the author’s and do not reflect upon her patient teachers.

Part of the proceeds of this and all of Louise Erdrich’s books help fund Birchbark Books, an independent bookstore, and Birchbark Press, an Ojibwe-language publishing venture, located in Minneapolis, Minnesota (www.birchbarkbooks.com). This book is printed on recycled paper.