A plot to reclaim the native land

For better or for worse, most white people have two popular avenues of contact with native Americans: casino gambling or Louise Erdrich. My money's on Erdrich, with whom the odds of winning something of real value are essentially guaranteed.

The daughter of a Chippewa mother and a German-American father, this Minnesota author won critical and popular success with her first novel, "Love Medicine," in 1984. Since then, 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.

The brevity of her latest, "Four Souls," makes it a tempting entry point for readers new to her canon. And whether we like it or not, length takes on special importance for English teachers trying to add quality multicultural voices to an already packed curriculum. But "Four Souls" is clearly part of a larger, organic whole - something for fans to savor and another compelling reason for readers who don't know her to start at the beginning.

Like all Erdrich's novels, this one is about healing, physical and spiritual recovery in all its agony and beauty. Fleur Pillager is the last survivor of a long line of medicine women. Estranged from her only daughter and deeply embittered, she sets out on a mission to kill John James Mauser, a wealthy businessman who swindled many native Americans, including her family, out of their land.

When she arrives at the door of his mansion - built from her sacred trees - she immediately gets a job as a laundrywoman. John James Mauser produces an extraordinary amount of dirty laundry (one or two complete bed changes per night), owing to a peculiar affliction that makes him sweat profusely. He also suffers from frequent seizures, another legacy of his service in World War I, which has left him weak and miserable.

So weak and miserable, in fact, that Fleur cannot kill him. Though "she got to know the house the way a hunter knows the woods," her prey is too decrepit. "When Fleur saw how Mauser already suffered, she felt cheated of her revenge. She wanted the man healthy so that she could destroy him fresh." First, she must nurse him back to health, kneading the tension from his muscles and banishing the demons from his brain.

Her patience is boundless. She keeps his linens brilliant white even while pursuing her dark plans, but somewhere in the process, Mauser falls in love with her, and Fleur is ensnared in her own plot. "Affection," Erdrich writes, "takes one by surprise."

Two narrators convey this strange tale. The first is Mauser's lonely sister-in-law, Polly, who hired Fleur to clean their linens, unaware that she was bringing one of Mauser's many victims into the house. She's been studying her sister's sterile marriage for years, serving as a kind of embittered handmaid. By the time she realizes the threat that Fleur poses, it's too late.

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