The Last Report On The Miracles At Little No Horse: Summary and book reviews of The Last Report On The Miracles At Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich, plus links to an excerpt from The Last Report On The Miracles At Little No Horse and a biography of Louise Erdrich.
The Last Report On The Miracles At Little No Horse
by Louise Erdrich
Hardcover: Mar 2001,
368 pages.
Paperback: Apr 2002,
368 pages.
For more than a half century, Father Damien Modeste has served his beloved people, the Ojibwe, on the remote reservation of Little No Horse. Compelled to his task by a direct mystical experience, Father Damien has made enormous sacrifices, and experienced the joys of commitment as well as deep suffering. Now, nearing the end of his life, Father Damien dreads the discovery of his physical identity, for he is a woman who has lived as a man. He imagines the undoing of all that he has accomplished -- sees unions unsundered, baptisms nullified, those who confessed to him once again unforgiven. To complicate his fears, his quiet life changes when a troubled colleague comes to the reservation to investigate the life of the perplexing, difficult, possibly false saint Sister Leopolda. Father Damien alone knows the strange truth of Sister Leopolda's piety, but these facts are bound up in his own secret. In relating his history and that of Leopolda, whose wonder working is documented but inspired, he believes, by a capacity for evil rather than the love of good, Father Damien is forced to choose: Should he reveal all he knows and risk everything? Or should he manufacture a protective history? In spinning out the tale of his life, Father Damien in fact does both. His story encompasses his life as a young woman, her passions, and the pestilence, tribal hatreds, and sorrows passed from generation to generation of Ojibwe. From the fantastic truth of Father Damien's origin as a woman to the hilarious account of the absurd demise of Nanapush, his best friend on the reservation, his story ranges over the span of the century.
In a masterwork that both deepens and enlarges the world of her previous novels set on the same reservation, Louise Erdrich captures the essence of a time and the spirit of a woman who felt compelled by her beliefs to serve her people as a priest. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse is a work of an avid heart, a writer's writer, and a storytelling genius.
BOOK REVIEWS
Media Reviews
Library Journal
The investigation of art as mainstay and revelation is particularly sharp, and one hopes Erdrich will pursue this line of thought in her next work. Highly recommended.
Los Angeles Times
Messy, ribald, deeply tragic, preposterous and heartfelt, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse is a love story, and what shines most brilliantly through its pages are Erdrich's intelligence and compassion. Let the world shake, buckle, storm and burn. Let the people suffer, as they will. It is our connections to the past and the future, through families and connections to kin, that grant us our saintliness and our transcendent power.
Los Angeles Times
Messy, ribald, deeply tragic, preposterous and heartfelt, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse is a love story, and what shines most brilliantly through its pages are Erdrich's intelligence and compassion. Let the world shake, buckle, storm and burn. Let the people suffer, as they will. It is our connections to the past and the future, through families and connections to kin, that grant us our saintliness and our transcendent power.
Elle
Spellbinding….While displaying the lyrical grace of Love Medicine, her first and best novel, The Last Report is angrier, more ambitious, full of 'madness, the stars, sin, and death.' But what surpassing pleasures spring from its wild, dark vision.
New York Times Book Review
[B]eguiling . . . Erdrich takes us farther back in time than she ever has, so far back that she comes, in a sense, to the edge of the reservation that has been her fictional world.
New York Times Book Review
[B]eguiling . . . Erdrich takes us farther back in time than she ever has, so far back that she comes, in a sense, to the edge of the reservation that has been her fictional world.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by ron sterzinger Father Damien pray for us Louise's character Father Damien is probably one of the greatest characters to emerge on the pages of literature since little Oskar Manzerath in Gunter Grass's book the Tin Drum.
Rated of 5
by Mary Saputo
This totally delightful book has made me sit back and reflect upon the worthiness of my own life. (not nearly over yet) It weaves a tale of a lifetimes. One could not understand the end without the beginning or the middle. So many lifes woven... Read More
An epic novel and a thrilling literary discovery, The Orphan Master's Son follows a young man's journey through the icy waters, dark tunnels, and eerie spy chambers of the world's most mysterious dictatorship, North Korea.
War, natural disaster, reckless gods and the recognition of impermanence in the world are just some of the threads that AS Byatt weaves into this most timely of books. Linguistically stunning and imaginatively abundant, this is a landmark.
A beguiling, imaginative, inspiring story about the bigness of being alive as an individual, as a member of a tribe, and as a participant in history, exploring how we use storytelling to survive and shape our own truths.
Brilliantly evoking the long-vanished world of masters and servants, Margaret Powell's classic memoir of her time in service is the remarkable true story of an indomitable woman who, though she served in the great houses of England, never stopped aiming high.
Vivid, daring, and unforgettable, The Printmaker's Daughter shines fresh light on art, loyalty, and the tender and indelible bond between a father and daughter.
After hearing the interview on NPR with the author, Ayad Akhtar, I was intrigued.
This is a timely, contemporary novel concerning topics of...
read more
I read The Healing in two sittings it is a fascinating story of plantation life at the beginning of the Civil War. Granada, a slave newborn child...
read more
Amazon to open bricks and mortar store in Seattle(Feb 07 2012) Last week, the word in the blogosphere was that Amazon was considering opening a bricks-and-mortar store. Over the weekend goodereader.com added substance to...
Full Story
Arizona bills Amazon for $53 million in uncollected sales tax(Feb 06 2012) The ongoing sales tax battle between many US states and large online retailers, most notably Amazon, continues with a thrust from Arizona which, last week,...
Full Story
Los Angeles Times
of 5
by ron sterzinger
RSS feed
