Intriguing Erdich Novel Ultimately Eludes Readers

The Last Report on the Miracles 
at Little No Horse 
by Louise Erdrich, Harper Collins 

Andrew Marton 
Fort Worth Star-Telegram 

   The dedication page of Louise Erdrich’s latest novel, “The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse’’ begins with what appears to be an American Indian tribal word, “Nindinawemaganido,’’ followed by an incantatory paragraph outlining the ‘four layers’’ above and below the earth through which, Erdrich suggests, we drift as we dream. 
   So many of this novel’s strengths and weaknesses are neatly distilled in this opening page. Although it resonates with the kind of authentic Indian culture contained in many of Erdrich’s works, the story line tends to get bogged down in baroquely phrased scenes delving too deeply into the “before’’ rather than the “now’’ of the story. 
   Erdrich, a writer who is part American Indian, had back-to-back-to-back successes of “Love Medicine,’’ “The Beet Queen’’ and “Tracks.’’ She gained national attention with her uncanny ability to blend the mystical power of her strong-willed characters into poetic literary architecture. 
   “The Last Report’’ continues Erdrich’s authentic touch with the hard-bitten rituals of the American Indian (witness the recipe for spit-roasted porcupine). In this work, the tribe in question is the Ojibwe (Erdrich’s mother was of French Ojibwe descent), and the name of the forbidding reservation is “Little No Horse.’’ 
   Father Damien Modeste imbues this North Dakota Indian community with a deep vein of spiritual righteousness. Father Damien is the book’s primary vessel, and it is through him that much of its mysticism flows. In one of Erdrich’s most brash literary inventions, Father Damien realizes that he harbors a woman’s soul in a man’s body. 
   This is no mere gender-bending plot contrivance. Erdrich works feverishly to pit Father Damien against his feminine parallel life. Flickering in front of Father Damien, like some horrific home movie, are all the baptisms, marriage ceremonies and confessions over which he has presided — all potentially erased because of his gender mendacity. Erdrich succinctly sums up the prelate’s pickle: “Father Damien was both a robber and a priest. For what is it to entertain a daily deception? Wasn’t he robbing all who looked upon him? Stealing their trust?’’ 
   Plowing through Father Damien’s pain-soaked fields of disingenuousness, Erdrich’s dexterous language is completely engrossing. Thanks to her thickets of images (‘’the air was cold and bubbled in her blood like sleep ... His requests, sharp black slivers of metal pierced the sun ...’’), Erdrich executes a sexual bait-and-switch without it coming off as some cheap contrivance. 
   But she gradually begins to elude the reader with her extensive back-filling of Father Damien’s early life as a woman. Erdrich expends chapter after chapter on Father Damien’s female doppelganger and her multiple personality choices (‘’Tomorrow, she thought, I’ll get rid of this cassock and be Agnes DeWitt again, formerly Sister Cecilia ...’’). 
   Rather than embrace the reader, Erdrich’s embroidering of the novel’s internal history entangles one in a kind of woolly character history, ultimately preventing “The Last Report’’ from moving steadily forward.