Return of the native's drum

I was fortunate enough to grow up in a town with a wise and kindly children's librarian. Mrs. Renwick seemed to have read every book ever written on several continents and always knew which one to press into my hands.

Often as she did so she would offer me background. "She writes wonderful books about horses. You should start with this one," she said handing me my first Marguerite Henry. "This is quite different from 'The Secret Garden,' " she explained as she added "Sara Crewe" to my stack.

But sometimes she would just slide a book across the desk saying, "This is for you." That meant that my reading pleasure would require no introduction.

Mrs. Renwick isn't here anymore but if she were she might well present The Painted Drum just that way.

Some readers will approach this book already knowing quite a lot about Louise Erdrich, her four daughters, her native American heritage, and her rich catalog of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and children's books. Others may pick it up without knowing a thing.

It won't matter. This is simply a good book. You can enjoy it as one more piece of the Erdrich canon, or you can just plain enjoy it. Longtime readers of Erdrich are unlikely to rank it among her very best, but it nonetheless bears the marks of her mastery as a writer: neatly etched characters, finely calibrated prose, and flashes of wisdom and wit throughout.

The story begins in New Hampshire, in a children's cemetery. (The book is threaded throughout with tales of the loss of - or the fear of the loss of - a child or young sibling, but the meaning of this particular cemetery does not become clear until the novel's last pages.)

Faye Travers is in her car, poised at the cemetery's exit, wondering whether to turn right or left. Like the other characters in this book, Faye is a survivor.

Now in her 50s, she has weathered loss and sorrow in her life, finally settling into calm, ordered domesticity with her mother, Elsie. They have a business together doing estate appraisals.

Faye works hard at maintaining a wry, detached personna. "The more I come to know people, the better I like ravens, " she tells the reader. "Is it proper for the young to be so disappointing?" she wonders about her lover's sullen college student daughter.

But her reserve is pierced the day she finds a huge native American drum in a client's attic. Realizing that the client won't miss it, she takes it.

This is not a theft prompted by greed. Faye and Elsie are descended from an Ojibwe Indian and know enough about native culture to understand the value native people would assign to a drum as large and beautifully made as this one. They sense that a tragic story must have prompted its sale to a white trader. Faye decides she has no choice but to return it to its creator.

Page: 1 | 2