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Description edit
For more than a half century, Father Damien Modeste has served his beloved people, the Ojibwe, on the remote reservation of Little No Horse. 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. To complicate... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Characters/People edit
- Father Damien Modeste: The central character of the book. This is a priest that has spent most of his life on an Indian Reservation
- Sister Leopolda: Add a description of this character.
- Mary Kashpaw
- Agnes Dewitt
- Margaret Kashpaw
- Sister Hildegarde
- Berndt
- Lulu
- Pauline Puyat
- Nanapush
- Bernadette
- Mashkiigikwe
- Chopin
- Gregory Wekkle
- Fleur
- Jude Miller
- Nector
- Quill
- Napoleon Morrissey
- Father Jude
- Marie Kashpaw
- Father Hugo
- Sophie
- Makoons
- John James Mauser
- Adelphine
- Father Miller
- Nanabozho
- Ojibwe
- Dympna
- Mary Martin
- Cecilia
- Rockhead
Quotes edit
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“And Chopin, played simply, devastates the heart. Sometimes a pause between the piercing sorrows of minor notes made a sister scrubbing the floor weep into the bucket where she dipped her rag so that the convent’s boards, washed in tears, seemed to creak now in a human tongue.”
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“Berndt Vogel’s passion engaged him, mind and heart. He now prepared himself. Having dragged army caissons through hip-deep mud after the horses died in torment, having seen his best friend suddenly uncreated into a mass of shrieking pulp, having lived intimately with pouring tumults of eager lice and rats plump with a horrifying food, he was rudimentarily prepared for the suffering he would experience in love.”
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“She allowed herself to fall apart. Disintegrated into pieces of creation, which God might pick up and turn curiously this way and that to catch the light. What a relief it was, for those moments, to be nothing, a smashed thing, and to have no thought or expectation.”
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“Who is to say this isn't exactly how, one morning people wake up mad? They have simply dreamed themselves down too many paths and at each turn or pause, as they attempt to travel back, they are swept up in the poignancy of being.”
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“Thus was her salvation composed of the very great and very small. The vast comfort of a God who comforted her in a language not her own. The bread of life. The gold orange of washed carrots and the taste of salt.”
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“Whatever his belief, Father Damien had acted on the fundamental dictates of a great love. Sacrifice had been his rule. He'd put others above himself and lived in the abyss of doubt rather than forsake those in need.”
- Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
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“The buffalo were taking leave of the earth and all they loved,” said the old chiefs and hunters after years had passed and they could tell what split their hearts. “The buffalo went crazy with grief to see the end of things. Like us, they saw the end of things and like many of us, many today, they did not care to live.”
Highlighted by 13 Kindle customers -
Was doubt when coupled with devotion a greater virtue than simple faith?
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Some people grieve by holding fast to the love of others, some by rejecting all companionship. Some grieve with tears and some with dry howls. Some grieve like water, some burn. Some are fuel for the fire of sorrow and some are stone. Agnes was pure slate, dark and impenetrable.
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Our souls are tethered by the love of things that cannot last, Agnes wrote, a note in her pocket. But she had sometimes to think the opposite. Our souls are freed—the only problem was that freedom was an open and a lonely space.
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It was this immense resignation to the shape of his life that opened him every day to the experience of joy.
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Between these two, where was the real self? It came to her that both Sister Cecilia and then Agnes were as heavily manufactured of gesture and pose as was Father Damien. And within this, what sifting of identity was she? What mote? What nothing?
Highlighted by 7 Kindle customers -
And Chopin, played simply, devastates the heart. Sometimes a pause between the piercing sorrows of minor notes made a sister scrubbing the floor weep into the bucket where she dipped her rag so that the convent’s boards, washed in tears, seemed to creak now in a human tongue. The air of the house thickened with sighs.
Highlighted by 7 Kindle customers -
There is no one I want to visit except in the Ojibwe heaven, and so at this late age I’m going to convert, stupid dog, and become at long last the pagan that I always was at heart before I was Cecilia, when I was just Agnes, until I was seduced and diverted by the music of Chopin.”
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Pauline was, of course, the warped result of all that twisted her mother. She was what came next, beyond the end of things. She was the residue of what occurred when some of our grief-mad people trampled their children. Yes, Leopolda was the hope and she was the poison. And the history of the Puyats is the history of the end of things. It is bound up in despair and the red beasts’ lust for self-slaughter, an act the chimookomanag call suicide, which our people rarely practiced until now.”
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Sometimes she howled and savagely tore the wallpaper of her bedroom and then lay on the floor. Spent, she thought that there was no place as unknown as grief.
Highlighted by 4 Kindle customers
Setting & Locations edit
First Sentence edit
The grass was white with frost on the shadowed sides of the reservation hills and ditches, but the morning air was almost warm, sweetened by a southern wind.
Authors & Contributors edit
- Louise Erdrich (Author)
First Edition edit
Original Language: English
Publisher: Add the publisher.
Country: Add the country of publication.
Publication Date: 2001
ISBN: Add the ISBN.
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Add the publisher.
Country: Add the country of publication.
Publication Date: 2001
ISBN: Add the ISBN.
Page Count: 384
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
- Dewey: 813.54
Subjects edit
- Books › Literature & Fiction › World Literature › United States › Native American › Erdrich, Louise
- Books › Nonfiction › Social Sciences › Special Groups › Native American Studies
- Books › Literature & Fiction › Authors, A-Z › ( E ) › Erdrich, Louise
- Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary
- Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary
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