Customer Reviews

Four Souls: A Novel (P.S.)

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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

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!

There is no revenge like success, as the saying goes, and Fleur Pillager is out for both. She adopts her mother's name, Four Souls, and sets foot on a mission to seek restitution from the robber baron who has stripped bare the Minnesota forests her Ojibwe ancestors called home.

As the scheme to avenge her family unfolds, Fleur proves to be no ordinary woman. She is so complex, in fact, that it takes several narrators to tell her story, a device that makes FOUR SOULS a fascinating and enigmatic tale of the myths, sorrows and passions of a vanishing civilization.

There is old Nanapush, tribal elder, who observes as Fleur launches her private incursion against the ailing World War I veteran, John James Mauser, lumber baron and social scion of Minneapolis society. Polly Elizabeth, Mr. Mauser's sister-in-law, who runs the household, hires Fleur as a housemaid and laundress. She seems efficient and is seemingly everywhere and nowhere, all at once. Little does Polly Elizabeth know how Fleur will change the lives of all within the walls of the Mauser mansion.

Fleur discovers that her nemesis is far too ill to thoroughly appreciate his demise at her hand, so she sets out to cure him of odd maladies from World War I wounds. Her tender mercies lead instead to marriage to Mauser, and as Polly Elizabeth says, "Nothing in the look of her and the ignorant silence told me she could possibly end up connected to me." Nor could Polly Elizabeth or John James Mauser ever imagine where that connection would lead.

FOUR SOULS evolves slowly and as magically as the mists on a summer morning pond. Louise Erdrich, who wrote the bestseller TRACKS, which is a precursor to FOUR SOULS, seems to know the minds, voices and ways of the Ojibwe Indians. The shift in narrative voice is sometimes confusing as the transitions are not always obvious, but clarity is restored as you fall into the cadence of the various characters. All are well defined and drawn, and FOUR SOULS haunts you with its aura of irony and fulfillment --- fulfillment that doesn't always come in the manner in which it is sought.

--- Reviewed by Roz Shea

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.

Oh boy, oh boy, Erdrich is out with a new one: Four Souls and it's a mighty fine read. This one focusses on Fleur Pillager and it's sly, witty and graceful as well as a bit of a thriller. I wonder about that surname, Pillager. Fluer isn't particularly easy to like and don't think Erdrich meant her to be -- which makes her AND the novel all the more interesting. Interesting trivia bit: it's shorter than usual for Erdrich; I haven't decided yet if that's good or not. Fortunately I don't have to as there will be another along soon, thank goodness.

Through the years I've read several books by Louise Erdrich. She's a good writer although sometimes I find her narrative to be a bit confusing. This is the case in her 2004 "Four Souls" in which she uses a character she's used in books before, an American Indian woman named Fleur Pillager.

The book had a good beginning. It's set in the Midwest in the 1920s. Fleur is out for revenge against the wealthy white man who had stolen the Indian's land. Her plans are to make him suffer, but she soon discovers that he is very ill. She becomes a laundress in his household and manages to cure him with the intent of making him suffer later. Things don't work out exactly as she planned though and, as the story unfolds, she becomes hard to understand.

There are several narrators. One is Polly Gheen, the gently-raised spinster sister-in-law of the wealthy man. I loved her voice and the way she tells her story. Another narrator is Nanapush, an aging Indian man who is still on the reservation. I suspect he had appeared in other books about Fleur and one of the problems of "Four Souls" is that the back-story isn't clear. But Nanapush sure is clear. He's both comical and wise and managed to make me laugh out loud. He and his wife Margaret are always fighting but he loves her tremendously with a passion not usually aspired to elderly people. He commits some very foolhardy acts to show that love and this is where the book seems to turn into a farce. Margaret is a narrator too and it's nice to get her point of view as the story unfolds.

The book is short, a mere 201 pages and an easy read. I enjoyed being thrust into the contrasting worlds of the both the rich people and the American Indians. Some of the central characters needed more development though, especially Fleur. After the first chapter, she appears in the story but always through someone else's eyes. And, after I finished the book, I was left to wonder about some of the details. I suspect this is because this novel is actually a sequel. Therefore I always felt I was missing something.

In spite of its faults though, I did enjoy Four Souls. But I would suggest you read some of her earlier books in order to enjoy it more.

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."

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

I've read tantalizing tidbits about Fleur Pillager in other Erdrich novels and stories, but here I got to meet the real woman, in all her magnificent flawed beauty. I especially enjoyed the storytelling when it came from the old Native Nanapush, one of the narrators who combine to tell the story of
Fleur's revenge on a white land speculator. A priggish white spinster is one of the narrators, each of whom is affected by the vengeance motif. A poetic and highly satisfying reading experience.

The American Indian classic books of the 1960s tend to be in a conversation with the Dances with Wolves/Man Called Horse romanticism. The notion of the noble savage so in touch with nature that his every step is a silent walk with the great spirits is so pervasive that many writers like Momaday (sic?) used it in the same way Aish HaTorah exploits that Peretz/Sholem Aleichem to sell Judaism to non-Orthodox Jews. The plotlines concerned an Indian who gets into trouble and generally lives a wasted life until he "goes back to his roots" and finds strength on the reservation. Even ostensibly true stories like Lakota Woman follow that back to the roots narrative so closely that I was actually shocked to discover that embracing her cultural heritage and becoming a major mover in the American Indian Movement (as well as a thorn in the side of Dickie Wilson and the corrupt Western-made Indian councils of Pine Ridge) did not give her a happy and fulfilling life as evidenced by the beginning of the sequel where she is almost drinking herself to death and wanting to get as far away from her heroic Medicine Man husband as possible.

That's not to say that American Indian books are bad books (and that'd be a horrible thing to say in this context considering that Louise Erdrich owns (or owned - I moved away in 2004) a bookstore in Minneapolis that sells Indian books) but the absence of overtly romanticized Indian tropes always elevates a book about Indians in my mind.

Four Souls is part of an epic series of books in which the same characters show up in different contexts throughout. Nanapush, the trickster figure of Tracks is the major narrator of this story of tribal decay and stolen land. Nanapush is the holy fool who spends most of the book trying to work medicine against his enemy only to learn that the man that he envisions as the all-purpose demon is rather a pathetic soul who can't even take care of himself. However, the main character is the mysterious Fleur Pillager. The multiple narratives only deepen her mystery. Even when she has a fairly straightforward goal of finding the man who conned the tribe out of most of its land and killing him, she changes her mind and learns new tactics by marrying him instead. On purpose, she never speaks for herself but has others attempting to interpret her action. At one point she seems lost to drink but even then her mind it working until the ending when she achieves a victory for her tribe which effectively isolates her from the community. Whether she has been stumbling to this victory or purposefully planning her play throughout the narrative remains ambiguous but the workings of the tensions between white men and Indians, new and old ways, spirituality and modern faith echoes long after this book is over.