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THE LAST REPORT ON THE MIRACLES AT LITTLE NO HORSE

by Louise Erdrich ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 2001

Comparisons to Willa Cather (particularly her Death Comes for the Archbishop) as well as Faulkner now seem perfectly just....

The North Dakota world of interrelated Native American families that Erdrich has shaped into a myth of Faulknerian proportions is once again the province of her extraordinary sixth novel: a worthy companion to such triumphs as Love Medicine (1993) and The Antelope Wife (1998).

The action covers a span of nearly 90 years, and focuses primarily on two dramatic figures: "Sister Leopolda" Puyat, who has performed "miracles" of service at the Little No Horse Ojibwa reservation; and "Father Damien" Modeste, the resident priest who is actually Agnes De Witt: common-law wife of a murdered German immigrant farmer, lover of Chopin, and "Virgin of the Serpents," among other manifestations. Erdrich takes huge risks in this boldly imagined novel's early pages, which are replete with complicated exposition, while slowly building narrative and thematic bridges linking the aforementioned characters with figures familiar from her earlier fiction: stoical Fleur Pillager and her estranged, doomed children; mischief-making Gerry Nanapush, comforted and tormented by his several wives (not to mention a terrified moose, in a hilarious tall tale that's in itself a minor classic); Father Damien's stolid housekeeper (and keeper of "his" secret) Mary Kashpaw; and a very many others. Erdrich revisits and hovers over her people, recording their experiences and words and dreams, observing them from multiple perspectives and in various contexts. The result is a remarkably convincing portrayal of Native American life throughout this century—with the added dimension of an exactingly dramatized and deeply moving experience of spiritual conflict and crisis. The question of Sister Leopolda (a paragon of charity who may also have been a murderer) is posed unforgettably: "What weighs more, the death or the wonder?" And the passion of Father Damien, which climaxes with a gravely beautiful pilgrimage, is, throughout the story, a wonder to behold.

Pub Date: April 8, 2001

ISBN: 0-06-018727-1

Page Count: 352

Publisher: HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001

LITERARY FICTION | RELIGIOUS FICTION

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THE SENTENCE

BOOK REVIEW

by Louise Erdrich

THE NIGHT WATCHMAN

HOUSE OF LEAVES

by Mark Z. Danielewski ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 6, 2000

The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and...

An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.

Texts within texts, preceded by intriguing introductory material and followed by 150 pages of appendices and related "documents" and photographs, tell the story of a mysterious old house in a Virginia suburb inhabited by esteemed photographer-filmmaker Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green (an ex-fashion model), and their young children Daisy and Chad.  The record of their experiences therein is preserved in Will's film The Davidson Record - which is the subject of an unpublished manuscript left behind by a (possibly insane) old man, Frank Zampano - which falls into the possession of Johnny Truant, a drifter who has survived an abusive childhood and the perverse possessiveness of his mad mother (who is institutionalized).  As Johnny reads Zampano's manuscript, he adds his own (autobiographical) annotations to the scholarly ones that already adorn and clutter the text (a trick perhaps influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest ) - and begins experiencing panic attacks and episodes of disorientation that echo with ominous precision the content of Davidson's film (their house's interior proves, "impossibly," to be larger than its exterior; previously unnoticed doors and corridors extend inward inexplicably, and swallow up or traumatize all who dare to "explore" their recesses).  Danielewski skillfully manipulates the reader's expectations and fears, employing ingeniously skewed typography, and throwing out hints that the house's apparent malevolence may be related to the history of the Jamestown colony, or to Davidson's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dying Vietnamese child stalked by a waiting vulture.  Or, as "some critics [have suggested,] the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it."

Pub Date: March 6, 2000

ISBN: 0-375-70376-4

Page Count: 704

Publisher: Pantheon

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000

LITERARY FICTION

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NORMAL PEOPLE

by Sally Rooney ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 16, 2019

Absolutely enthralling. Read it.

A young Irish couple gets together, splits up, gets together, splits up—sorry, can't tell you how it ends!

Irish writer Rooney has made a trans-Atlantic splash since publishing her first novel, Conversations With Friends , in 2017. Her second has already won the Costa Novel Award, among other honors, since it was published in Ireland and Britain last year. In outline it's a simple story, but Rooney tells it with bravura intelligence, wit, and delicacy. Connell Waldron and Marianne Sheridan are classmates in the small Irish town of Carricklea, where his mother works for her family as a cleaner. It's 2011, after the financial crisis, which hovers around the edges of the book like a ghost. Connell is popular in school, good at soccer, and nice; Marianne is strange and friendless. They're the smartest kids in their class, and they forge an intimacy when Connell picks his mother up from Marianne's house. Soon they're having sex, but Connell doesn't want anyone to know and Marianne doesn't mind; either she really doesn't care, or it's all she thinks she deserves. Or both. Though one time when she's forced into a social situation with some of their classmates, she briefly fantasizes about what would happen if she revealed their connection: "How much terrifying and bewildering status would accrue to her in this one moment, how destabilising it would be, how destructive." When they both move to Dublin for Trinity College, their positions are swapped: Marianne now seems electric and in-demand while Connell feels adrift in this unfamiliar environment. Rooney's genius lies in her ability to track her characters' subtle shifts in power, both within themselves and in relation to each other, and the ways they do and don't know each other; they both feel most like themselves when they're together, but they still have disastrous failures of communication. "Sorry about last night," Marianne says to Connell in February 2012. Then Rooney elaborates: "She tries to pronounce this in a way that communicates several things: apology, painful embarrassment, some additional pained embarrassment that serves to ironise and dilute the painful kind, a sense that she knows she will be forgiven or is already, a desire not to 'make a big deal.' " Then: "Forget about it, he says." Rooney precisely articulates everything that's going on below the surface; there's humor and insight here as well as the pleasure of getting to know two prickly, complicated people as they try to figure out who they are and who they want to become.

Pub Date: April 16, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-984-82217-8

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Hogarth

Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019

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the last report on the miracles at little no horse

Patricia Prijatel

  • Relationships

Book Review: "The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse"

Louise erdrich demonstrates the importance of community and of belonging..

Posted November 9, 2021 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

  • Fiction novel "The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse" tells the story of Father Damien Modeste, a secretly female Catholic priest.
  • In the novel "The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse," Agnes becomes part of the Ojibwe community, and they help her become herself.
  • The book encourages comparisons with other classics, from "Death Comes for the Archbishop," by Willa Cather, to "Tom Jones" by Henry Fielding.

Patricia Prijatel

Biblical in nature and scope, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich , is replete with floods, snakes, sin, and forgiveness . Father Damien Modeste has lovingly served the Ojibwe settlement of Little No Horse for eight decades, forming his life around their needs. He may well be a saint. But he’s also a woman. Behind his priestly garb, he’s actually Agnes, who transformed herself into a Catholic priest after living a full life as a Catholic nun, farm wife, and general adventurer, with random interactions with outlaws, dead cows, and Chopin.

The epic tale of Agnes’s early life requires a total suspension of disbelief as she faces one passion after another, often losing herself in Chopin to such a degree that she ends up ecstatic and naked on the piano bench. This, not surprisingly, gets her kicked out of the convent. She finds love with a German farmer who dies defending her but leaves her his prosperous farm. Then Agnes gets caught in a disastrous flood, which sends her down the river in her wispy white nightdress, hanging on to her grand piano. When she lands, she finds a dead priest hanging in a tree, so she takes his dry clothes and his identity .

As one does.

How to be a man

This novel follows Agnes until she is over 100 and deeply entrenched in being Father Damien while maintaining vestiges of her real, feminine self. She wraps her breasts tightly to hide her feminine identity and learns the rules of being a man, as she defines early in the book:

Make requests in the form of orders. Give compliments in the form of concessions. Ask questions in the form of statements. Exercise to enhance the muscles of the neck. Admire women’s handiwork with copious amazement. Stride, swing arms, stop abruptly, stroke chin. Sharpen razor daily. Advance no explanations. Accept no explanations. Hum an occasional resolute march.

Despite her subterfuge, the Ojibwe know she's a woman and are just fine with her pretending to be a man, although they don't understand the necessity.

In one delightful section, Nanapush, an elder whom Agnes has learned to admire and love, questions her during a game of chess. He knows Agnes wants to keep her femininity a secret, so Nanapush chooses to address her during an especially tricky move because, quite simply, he wants to win the game:

“What are you?" he said to Damien, who was deep in a meditation over his bishop's trajectory. "A priest," said Father Damien. "A man priest or a woman priest?"

Agnes panics until she realizes Nanapush is really only curious.

"I am a priest," she whispered, hoarsely, fierce. "Why," said Nanapush kindly, as though Father Damien hadn't answered, to put the question to rest, "are you pretending to be a man priest?”

Why, indeed? Because the Catholic Church doesn't allow women to be priests and, throughout the book, when asked who she really is, Agnes consistently answers: “I am a priest.” A lover asks it, a papal investigator asks it, Agnes asks it of herself. Why: Because I am a priest.

Of love, community, and truth

She loves the Ojibwe, she becomes part of their community, and she lives to serve them. In turn, they nourish her. She helps them fight their battles, including their poverty and the loss of their land and trees. They help her become herself.

The book encourages comparisons with other classics, from Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather, to Tom Jones by Henry Fielding, with a little Faulker and Shakespeare thrown in, plus a bit of the Bible.

Erdrich's reprises her most memorable Ojibwa characters—Fleur and her daughter Lulu, plus the Nanapushes, Kashpaws, and the Puyats—which she introduced in previous novels ( Love Medicine, Four Souls, Tracks ). The book stands on its own, although it makes you want to read more to get the backstory on these people working hard to live a life of truth.

the last report on the miracles at little no horse

Chapter 18, "La Mooz, Or the Death of Nanapush," is a classic, worth reading by itself. Perhaps more than once. And the sections on Mary Kashpaw, from the very beginning (her aggressively terrible coffee) to the end and her final, silent care for Agnes/Damien, are heart-rending yet beautiful, a picture of true love.

What’s the miracle? There are many: the people, the land, the priest.

Patricia Prijatel

Patricia Prijatel is the E.T. Meredith Distinguished Professor Emerita at Drake University.

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National Book Foundation > Books > The Last Report on the Miracle at Little No Horse

The Last Report on the Miracle at Little No Horse

Finalist, national book awards 2001 for fiction.

The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich Book Cover

Louise Erdrich , a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, is the author of many novels as well as volumes of poetry, children’s books, and a memoir of early motherhood. More about this author >

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Author Louise Erdrich’s “The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse”

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  • Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/author-louise-erdrichs-the-last-report-on-the-miracles-at-little-no-horse

Author Louise Erdrich discusses her book, "The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse."

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Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH:

The author is Louise Erdrich, and the book is her latest novel, "The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse." It's about Father Damion Modest, a priest ministering to Ojibwa Indians on the North Dakota reservation from 1912 until almost the end of the century. The compelling secret of the novel revealed early on is that Father Damion is a woman pretending to be a man. Louise Erdrich is part Turtle Mountain Ojibwa, part German; she's a poet as well as a novelist. Her book, "Love Medicine," won the National Book Critic Circle Award in 1984. Thanks for being with us.

LOUISE ERDICH:

Good to be here, thanks.

Tell us a little about the background of this book. What images came to you that prompted you to make Father Damion a woman?

I wasn't sure that Father Damion was anyone I had written about before, and I was writing the very first part of the book in which the aged and rather discouraged priest writes once again to the Vatican hoping for an answer. And it turned out when my priest started going, getting dressed to go to bed, my priest was not a man, my priest was a woman. And I had to stop for a while after that, retreat, talk to my mother who's a devout Catholic, figure this out, and from there I went on writing the priest– there's no secret– as a woman.

It must have opened all sorts of possibilities for you that wouldn't have been there if she had been a man.

Oh, completely. And I think I had a sympathy with the character that I must admit I might not have had — because by the end of the book, the priest, Father Damion, the woman priest, is really converted by the people to whom she's come to minister, and it's a reverse conversion in a way.

I wanted to ask you about how much research goes into a book like this. How much is based on what you really learn about the facts and the times of that period, and how much is imagination?

I do a kind of research that wouldn't qualify in any academic circles as research. I read whatever comes to me. And I go looking for things. I ferret things out, I find a lot in a small town, small town historical societies, mainly. I don't go to the big places very often. And some of the pieces that seem perhaps more, oh, to be magical or extraordinary actually are based on pieces of research and on bits of history.

Would you read one of those for us and set the context for us?

I'd be glad to. This piece is inspired by an old hunter's diary, and what the buffalo actually do is, from a piece of research, it's the truth, it's not magical, it's realism. "If you know about the buffalo hunts, you perhaps know that the one I describe now many generations passed, was one of the last. During that hunt, the rest of the herd did not bolt away, but behaved afterward in a chilling fashion. The surviving buffalo milled at the outskirts of the carnage, not grazing but watching with an insane intensity as one by one, swiftly and painstakingly, each carcass was dismantled. Even through the night the buffalo stayed and were seen by the uneasy hunters and their families the next dawn to have remained standing quietly, as though mourning, the relatives that lay before them skinned. At noon, the flies descended. The buzzing was horrendous. The sky went black. It was then that the sun's zenith, the light shredded by scarves of moving insects, that the buffalo began to make a sound. It was a sound never heard before. No buffalo had ever made this sound. No one knew what the sound meant, except that one old, toughened hunter sucked his breath in when he heard it, and as the sound increased, he attempted not to cry out. Tears ran over his cheeks and down his throat anyway, wetting his shoulders, for the sound gathered power until everyone was lost in the immensity. The sound was heard once, and never to be heard again. That sound made the body ache; the mind pinch shut. An unmistakable and violent grief, it was as though the earth itself was sobbing. The buffalo were taking leave of the earth, and all they loved, so the old chiefs and hunters after years had passed and they could tell what split their hearts."

I find that passage so heartbreaking.

Me too, as I read it.

And right below it is a line about one of the main characters in the book where you write, "she was the residue of what occurred when some of our grief- mad people trampled their own children." So you're making, you take it to talk about people, too, and really your books are about the end of a whole world. When you set out to write these books, which treat the same characters the same place most of the novel…

…Did you know this was what you were going to do?

I had to back up, because I don't believe they're really about the end of a world. They're about the change in a world. This is an ongoing world, it's a culture, I think, it's remarkable for its resilience, and the will to survive. And as… if we go along and make this analogy, the buffalo certainly have a great renaissance and a great resurgence, and people do connect the survival and the tenacity of native cultures with the survival and the tenacity of these great plains animals, and I think there's something to be said for that kind of endurance that native people have had all this time.

And did you know when you started out that this is what you would do, you'd write about this huge period of change, and basically your family?

No, I didn't. But as I let the story take me along, it began to be about change. And I really believe that all stories are about the capacity to endure change, and the experience of hanging on to what's important, love and family and work, through the great changes in history.

This was a very, it's a very complex novel, it goes back and forth in time. Was it really hard to write? I read that it took you quite a long time.

It took me a long time not so much because of the formal aspects, but because it was about a spiritual search. And I suppose I was embarked on my own. And it really was about someone who starts out as a very firm believing Catholic and, as I said, is converted slowly by the practical spirituality of the people who she's come to convert.

I happened to read one of your older novels over the weekend, and you have some characters in novels that go way back, that you have to make sure you know what they did in those novels so you're consistent.

How do you do it?

I have a secret weapon, his name is Trent Duffy, he's a wonderful copy editor who has kept track with me all along, and who works with me to make everything connect at the end of the book. I write it all, and then Trent helps me connect it all.

He must have a very complex genealogy.

It's so complicated, and finally it's in the books, in the end papers, because readers kept coming up to me with these painfully constructed family trees and saying, "is this right?" And I really felt that I was obliged to do it.

Is your next novel going to be about the same families?

It hasn't been so far. It's called "The Master Butcher Singing Club." And it really is inspired by the fact of the German side of my family, on that side my grandfather belonged to a master butcher singing club.

I'll look forward to that, too. Louise Erdrich, thank for being with us.

Thanks so much, good to talk to you.

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Louise Erdrich, Making Miracles at 'No Horse'

With her seventh novel, National Book Critics Circle Award winner Louise Erdrich explores the impact of Catholicism on Native American spirituality. The book is called The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

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Reading guide for The Last Report On The Miracles At Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich

Summary  |  Excerpt  |  Reading Guide  |  Reviews  |  Read-Alikes  |  Genres & Themes  |  Author Bio

The Last Report On The Miracles At Little No Horse

by Louise Erdrich

The Last Report On The Miracles At Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich

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  • Literary Fiction
  • Midwest, USA
  • Nebr.& Dakotas
  • 20th Century (multiple decades)
  • Mid-Life Onwards
  • Native and Indigenous Authors
  • Strong Women
  • Religious or Spiritual Themes

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  • Reading Guide

Reading Guide Questions

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

  • Do you find Father Damien to be an attractive character? If so, why? Does it bother you that he is an impostor, a thief, a liar? Does it bother you that he spends money on a piano rather than on some other cause? He easily forgives others their sins, but can we forgive him that he has an affair with another priest?
  • The novel invites comparisons between Leopolda and Damien. Make lists of some of their similarities and differences. Does Erdrich seem to want us to favor one over the other, or is she making through the strangeness of both of them a comment about the "miracles" of Catholicism?
  • Father Damien goes to Little No Horse to convert the Ojibwe to Catholicism. By the end of the book has he nearly become converted to the very paganism he set out to replace?
  • What do you make of the black dog that hounds Father Damien? Is it the devil? Does it really speak? Is it evidence that Damien is insane? Why did Erdrich risk having us even ask that last question by including the dog in the first place? If it is a devil who tempts Father Damien in the wilderness, does Damien become some sort of a Christ figure?
  • Consider the various meanings of "passion" in this novel? Why does Erdrich use the word so often? What do you make of the implied allusion to the passion of Christ-or do you see no such implication?
  • In this novel a very passionate woman spends most of her life impersonating a man. Along the way she becomes aware of certain ways that men typically behave, as well as how they are typically treated by others. Is there a message here about male-female roles and attitudes? Does Erdrich's use of both genders of pronoun (he/she, etc.) to refer to Father Damien confuse you, or does it make sense in the context of the story?
  • In this novel more than any previous one, Erdrich gives untranslated words, phrases, and even sentences in the Ojibwe language. Why does she do this? Is it effective? Can you usually figure out from the context what the words, phrases, and sentences mean?
  • Do you find Nanapush to be as attractive a character as Father Damien does? Is he, like his namesake Nanabozho, a trickster figure of mythological proportions, or is he just a funny, oversexed, foolish, and sometimes wise old man? How would you compare his sexuality with that of Father Damien?
  • What are we to make of the Pope's failure to reply to any of Father Damien's letters during his lifetime? What are we to make of the Pope's willingness to write at the end of the novel after Father Damien is dead? Does this last make the novel feel more like comedy or tragedy? That is, does the final fax give the novel a happy or sad ending?

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Harper Perennial. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.

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"For more than a half century, Father Damien Modeste has served his beloved people, the Ojibwe, on the remote reservation of Little No Horse. Compelled to his task by a direct mystical experience, Father Damien has made enormous sacrifices, and experienced the joys of commitment as well as deep suffering. 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.

He imagines the undoing of all that he has accomplished - sees unions unsundered, baptisms nullified, those who confessed to him once again unforgiven. To complicate his fear, his quiet life changes when a troubled colleague comes to the reservation to investigate the life of the perplexing, difficult, possibly false saint Sister Leopolda.".

"Father Damien alone knows the strange truth of Sister Leopolda's piety, but these facts are bound up in his own secret. In relating his history and that of Leopolda, whose wonder working is documented but inspired, he believes, by a capacity for evil rather than the love of good, Father Damien is forced to choose. Should he reveal all he knows and risk everything? Or should he manufacture a protective history? In spinning out the tale of his life, Father Damien in fact does both.

His story encompasses his life as a young woman, her passions, and the pestilence, tribal hatreds, and sorrows passed from generation to generation of Ojibwe. From the fantastic truth of Father Damien's origin as a woman to the hilarious account of the absurd demise of Nanapush, his best friend on the reservation, his story ranges over the span of the century.".

"In a masterwork that both deepens and enlarges the world of her previous novels set on the same reservation, Louise Erdrich captures the essence of a time and the spirit of a woman who felt compelled by her beliefs to serve her people as a priest. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse is a work of an avid heart, a writer's writer, and a storytelling genius."--BOOK JACKET.

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BOOKS OF THE TIMES

BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Saintliness, Too, May Be in the Eye of the Beholder

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By Michiko Kakutani

  • April 6, 2001

THE LAST REPORT ON THE MIRACLES AT LITTLE NO HORSE

By Louise Erdrich

361 pages. HarperCollins. $26.

In summary, the story line of ''The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse'' might seem an incongruous undertaking for Louise Erdrich, the author of elliptical, dreamlike novels like ''The Beet Queen'' and ''The Antelope Wife.'' We are asked in these pages to accompany an envoy from the Vatican to the North Dakota Ojibwe Indian reservation, which has served as the backdrop for so many of Ms. Erdrich's novels, and to compare and contrast the lives of two prospective saints: Father Damien, a priest who has devoted his life to caring for his flock with quiet devotion and grace, and Sister Leopolda, an overzealous nun who is said to have effected numerous miracles and cures.

If you strip away the sugared hagiography from many traditional lives of the saints, however, there is a mixture of the mundane and magical reminiscent of that idiosyncratic blend of the real and the surreal in Ms. Erdrich's fiction, as well as a litany of sufferings and gory ordeals, reminiscent of the travails and bizarre twists of fate sustained by her characters.

Although some of the gaudier plot twists Ms. Erdrich contrives in this novel feel overly schematic, her portrait of Father Damien and his odd, picaresque life is so moving, so precisely observed that it redeems the clumsier aspects of the book.

Father Damien, we learn near the start of ''No Horse,'' has a secret he has kept from his beloved congregation for eight decades. The secret is a startling one: he is really a woman named Agnes DeWitt, a former nun, who has led at least three very different existences in the course of her long life.

As a young woman she left the convent because her passion for music rivaled her passion for God, and upon leaving she fell in love with a farmer named Berndt Vogel, ''a good man who had a singular gift for everyday affection as well as the deepest tones of human love.'' Their happiness was abruptly shattered by a bank robber, who killed Berndt and wounded Agnes, stealing portions of her memory and propelling her into yet another series of adventures. After being washed away from Berndt's farm in a flood of biblical proportions, she comes across the body of the Rev. Damien Modeste, another of the flood's victims, who was en route to his mission with the Ojibwe Indians.

Out of grief for Berndt, out of confusion and exhaustion and a hunger to reinvent herself, Agnes precipitously assumes Father Damien's identity and takes up his position at the Little No Horse reservation: a place suffering in 1912 from starvation, illness and cultural disorientation, a place where time-honored traditions are dying, land is being stolen by greedy outsiders, and bitter family feuds have erupted between those who want to preserve the old ways and those who want to embrace the new.

Though the story of Agnes DeWitt a k a Father Damien is improbable, even ludicrous in outline, Ms. Erdrich uses her remarkable storytelling gifts to endow it with both emotional immediacy and the timeless power of fable. She makes palpable the loneliness and isolation Agnes feels in her disguise, and she makes palpable, too, the wrenching mixture of joy and guilt Agnes feels in her secret passion for another priest, who comes to work as her apprentice.

Perhaps most important, Ms. Erdrich conveys the bonds of love and sympathy Agnes develops with the people at Little No Horse: with Nanapush, one of the tribal elders, who will become her dearest friend; with Mary Kashpaw, a huge, brooding woman, orphaned as a girl and ''too well traveled a visitor in the dream world and the land of the dead'' to feel at home anyplace but the grounds of the church; and with the enigmatic Fleur, who abandons her daughter to avenge herself on the man who cheated her out of her land.

The one character in this novel Ms. Erdrich fails to flesh out convincingly is Pauline Puyat, a fanatical visionary who becomes Sister Leopolda and who is being considered by the Vatican envoy as a possible saint. Only distant church officials buy into the so-called miracles she has so arduously and calculatedly performed; as seen through the eyes of Father Damien and her other neighbors at Little No Horse, she emerges as a thoroughly manipulative creature, lacking in forgiveness, compassion and all the other saintly virtues.

Pauline (who, like other characters in ''No Horse,'' made an earlier appearance in other Erdrich novels) is the one person in this book depicted in stark, one-dimensional terms: a crazy masquerading as a martyr. But if Pauline's story is unpersuasive, it turns out to be but one melody in what is ultimately a choral novel, a novel filled with stories far more compelling than Pauline's and just as unlikely as Father Damien's.

By turns comical and elegiac, farcical and tragic, the stories span the history of this Ojibwe tribe and its members' wrestlings with time and change and loss. There is the story of the Ojibwe's last buffalo hunt and the story of the wolves' conversion. There is the story of the boy who used his penmanship to avenge the loss of his family's land and the story of the man who sacrificed himself to save his wife.

From these stories, and the story of Father Damien's devotion to his adopted people, Ms. Erdrich has woven an imperfect but deeply affecting narrative and in doing so filled out the history of that postage-stamp-size world in Ojibwe country that she has delineated with such fervor and fidelity in half a dozen novels.

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Title details for The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich - Available

The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

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A New York Times Notable Book

"Stunning. . . a moving meditation. . . infused with mystery and wonder." —Atlanta Journal-Constitution

In a masterwork that both deepens and enlarges the world of her previous novels, acclaimed author Louise Erdrich captures the essence of a time and the spirit of a woman who felt compelled by her beliefs to serve her people as a priest. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse deals with miracles, crises of faith, struggles with good and evil, temptation, and the corrosive and redemptive power of secrecy.

For more than a half century, Father Damien Modeste has served his beloved Native American tribe, 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 further complicate his quiet existence, a troubled colleague comes to the reservation to investigate the life of the perplexing, possibly false saint Sister Leopolda. Father Damien alone knows the strange truth of Leopolda's piety, but these facts are bound up in his own secret. He is faced with the most difficult decision: Should he tell all and risk everything . . . or manufacture a protective history for Leopolda, though he believes her wonder-working is motivated solely by evil?

The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse is a work of an avid heart, a writer's writer, and a storytelling genius.

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  • Louise Erdrich - Author
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  • ISBN: 9780060797966
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  • Release date: January 4, 2005
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OverDrive Listen audiobook ISBN: 9780060797966 File size: 408965 KB Release date: January 4, 2005 Duration: 14:12:00

MP3 audiobook ISBN: 9780060797966 File size: 409041 KB Release date: January 4, 2005 Duration: 14:11:50 Number of parts: 18

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COMMENTS

  1. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

    The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, first published in 2001, is a novel by author Louise Erdrich. The novel tells the story of Agnes DeWitt as Father Damien, the reverend who becomes part of the reservation community.

  2. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

    Louise Erdrich 4.19 12,589 ratings1,490 reviews This is the story of Father Damien Modeste, priest to his beloved people, the Ojibwe. Modeste, nearing the end of his life, dreads the discovery of his physical identity -- for he is a woman who has lived as a man.

  3. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse: A Novel

    The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse deals with miracles, crises of faith, struggles with good and evil, temptation, and the corrosive and redemptive power of secrecy. For more than a half century, Father Damien Modeste has served his beloved Native American tribe, the Ojibwe, on the remote reservation of Little No Horse.

  4. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

    The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse is a 2001 novel by Louise Erdrich about Agnes DeWitt, a woman who assumes the guise of a Catholic priest named Father Damien and devotes her...

  5. The Last Report on The Miracles at Little No Horse

    The North Dakota world of interrelated Native American families that Erdrich has shaped into a myth of Faulknerian proportions is once again the province of her extraordinary sixth novel: a worthy companion to such triumphs as Love Medicine (1993) and The Antelope Wife (1998).

  6. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

    The author of the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novel LOVE MEDICINE returns to the fictional North Dakota Ojibwe reservation of Little No Horse and its vigorous, flawed, sometimes supernaturally gifted residents Lulu Lamartine, Nanapush, and Fleur Pillager.

  7. Book Review: "The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

    Biblical in nature and scope, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse Louise Erdrich is replete with floods, snakes, sin, and forgiveness. Father Damien Modeste has lovingly served the...

  8. The Last Report On The Miracles At Little No Horse

    The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse is a work of an avid heart, a writer's writer, and a storytelling genius. Los Angeles Times The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse is a love story, and what shines most brilliantly through its pages are Erdrich's intelligence and compassion. Let the world shake, buckle, storm and ...

  9. The Last Report on the Miracle at Little No Horse

    The Last Report on the Miracle at Little No Horse - National Book Foundation National Book Foundation > Books > The Last Report on the Miracle at Little No Horse The Last Report on the Miracle at Little No Horse Finalist, National Book Awards 2001 for Fiction ISBN 9780060187279 Harper Perennial | HarperCollins Louise Erdrich

  10. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

    The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse deals with miracles, crises of faith, struggles with good and evil, temptation, and the corrosive and redemptive power of secrecy. For more...

  11. Author Louise Erdrich's "The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No

    Author Louise Erdrich discusses her book, "The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse." Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for...

  12. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse: A Novel

    In a masterwork that both deepens and enlarges the world of her previous novels set on the same reservation, Louise Erdrich captures the essence of a time and the spirit of a woman who felt compelled by her beliefs to serve her people as a priest. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse is a work of an avid heart, a writer's writer ...

  13. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

    Chapter 1 In chapter 1, set between 1910 and 1912, Berndt Vogel is introduced as having survived war in Europe and returning to a farm in North Dakota where he tends his horses. One day, a barefoot...

  14. Louise Erdrich, Making Miracles at 'No Horse'

    Louise Erdrich, Making Miracles at 'No Horse' July 8, 2001 12:00 AM ET. ... The book is called The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse. Facebook; Flipboard; Email; Read & Listen. Home ...

  15. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

    by Louise Erdrich The Last Report on the The story jumps back to 1910 when Sister Cecilia (Father Damian) is struggling with a rival for her devotion to the church: her passion for piano playing. The young Sister Cecilia is driven to distrac-tion by the ecstasy that possesses her when she plays Chopin.

  16. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

    The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse is a work of an avid heart, a writer's writer, and a storytelling genius. Discussion Guide 1. Do you find Father Damien to be an attractive character? If so, why? Does it bother you that he is an impostor, a thief, a liar?

  17. The Last Report On The Miracles At Little No Horse

    In her masterful new novel, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, Erdrich weaves a tale that spans nearly a century, the strange and compelling story of Father Damien Modeste, a beloved reservation priest who has hidden his true identity as a woman beneath his cassock. When the novel begins in 1996, movement is afoot to consider ...

  18. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

    The main characters in The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse include Agnes DeWitt/Father Damien Modeste, Sister Leopolda, and Father Jude Miller. Agnes DeWitt/Father Damien Modeste...

  19. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

    by Louise Erdrich. "For more than a half century, Father Damien Modeste has served his beloved people, the Ojibwe, on the remote reservation of Little No Horse. Compelled to his task by a direct mystical experience, Father Damien has made enormous sacrifices, and experienced the joys of commitment as well as deep suffering.

  20. BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Saintliness, Too, May Be in the Eye of the Beholder

    THE LAST REPORT ON THE MIRACLES AT LITTLE NO HORSE By Louise Erdrich 361 pages. HarperCollins. $26. In summary, the story line of ''The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse'' might...

  21. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

    Amazon.com: The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse: 9780786235209: Erdrich, Louise: Books. Skip to main content.us. Delivering to Lebanon 66952 Update location Books. Select the department you want to search in ...

  22. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

    The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse deals with miracles, crises of faith, struggles with good and evil, temptation, and the corrosive and redemptive power of secrecy. For more than a half century, Father Damien Modeste has served his beloved Native American tribe, the Ojibwe, on the remote reservation of Little No Horse.