Plague of Doves by Louise Erdich

I admit, I read a review of this book on Slate and it looked good. But I read this book in its entirety because it was about Native Americans, based on a true story, and I felt guilty stopping. I am glad I finished it but I did find second 20% of it or so a little hard to follow and kind of boring.

The story follows a set of Ojibwe Indians and caucasians in North Dakota over several generations as their reservation and town become more and more intertwined. The central story in the book is of a violent crime that results in several Indians being lynched. The book tells the story out of order, so as time goes on, relationships and occurences take on different meaning with different background.

The writing was pretty good, although the voice of one particular character, the grandfather, was hard for me to follow. I enjoyed learning about Native American life in modern times which I am woefully undereducated about. The story that Erdrich waves, if you can work through the parts that are tricky to read, is sad, surprising, and rewarding to finish.