Four Souls: A Novel

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 is never simple, and her intentions are complicated by her dangerous compassion for the man who wronged her.

A strange and compelling unkillable woman decides to leave home, and the story begins. Fleur Pillager takes her mother's name, Four Souls, for strength and 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 reservation. But revenge is never simple, and she quickly finds her intentions complicated by her own dangerous compassion for the man who wronged her.

The two narrators of Four Souls are from utterly different worlds. Nanapush, a "smart man and a fool," is both Fleur's savior and her conscience. He tells Fleur's story and tells his own. He would like a calm and discriminating love with his sweetheart, Margaret. He is old and would like to face death with his love beside him. Instead the two find themselves battling out their last years. When the childhood nemesis of Nanapush appears and casts his eye toward Margaret, Nanapush acts out an absurd revenge of his own and nearly ends up destroying everything. The other narrator, Polly Elizabeth Gheen, is a pretentious and vulnerable upper-crust fringe element, a hanger-on in a wealthy Minneapolis family, a woman aware of her precarious hold on those around her. To her own great surprise the entrance of Fleur Pillager into her household and her life effects a transformation she could never have predicted.

In the world of interconnected novels by Louise Erdrich, Four Souls is most closely linked to Tracks. All these works continue and elaborate the intricate story of life on a reservation peopled by saints and false saints, heroes and sinners, clever fools and tenacious women. Four Souls reminds us of the deep spirituality and the ordinary humanity of this world, and is as beautiful and lyrical as anything Louise Erdrich has written.

“Fleur’s story, along with comic subplots involving the narrators, is marked by imagery both poetic and moving.” - Library Journal

“Vividly evoked …A welcome addition, then, to a uniquely enthralling and important American story.” - Kirkus Reviews

“Trim, haunting, beautifully sketched...Four Souls stands alone as a trenchant rendering of the costs and causes of love, family, identity, memory and revenge.” - Elle

“Great originality and charm.” - Entertainment Weekly

“FOUR SOULS juxtaposes … the ribald and the elegiac.” - Atlantic Monthly

“Stunning flights of lyricism.” - San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

“Powerful and haunting.” - Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

“By turns shocking, heartbreaking, hilarious and bawdy…for Erdrich, and happily for her readers, the people of the Plains continue to offer inexhaustible riches.” - Chicago Tribune

“Full of satisfying yet unexpected twists…Four Souls begins with clean, spare prose but finishes in gorgeous incantations and poetry.” - New York Times Book Review

“Deeply moving…through a steady accumulation of beautiful, often funny books set around an Ojibwe reservation, she’s created the most compelling literary landscape since Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County.” - Christian Science Monitor