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

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Overview

For over half a century, Father Damien Modeste has lived a secret life as a woman, while serving 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. To complicate his fears, 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 the facts are bound up in his own secret. He is forced to choose: Should he reveal all he knows and risk everything Or should he manufacture a protective history 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 feels compelled by her beliefs to serve her people as a priest.

Editorial Reviews

Erdrich renders her North Dakota world of the Ojibwe with a lyrical and richly metaphorical prose style. Her narrative is interspersed with dozens of comic, tragic and all-too-human stories that illuminate her lively, complex and often bizarre Ojibwe people and the priests who come to convert them and minister to their needs. She compassionately portrays Father Damien (ne Agnes DeWitt) through worldly and spiritual joy, confusion and crisis. Erdrich commingles and explores many world views as Father Damien's life and thought are continually and profoundly reshaped by the lives, events, rites and rituals of the parishioners who come to love him so deeply. But some of the book's strengths become problems for listeners e.g., complicated family relations, complex exposition, confusing jumps back and forth between different time frames throughout an entire century. Fields has a pleasing voice, a fine feel for the material and the characters and a knack for low-key dramatization. But she has a narrow vocal range that becomes tiresome through 14.5 hours of tape. Based on the HarperCollins hardcover. (Apr.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Louise Erdrich

The daughter of a full-blooded Chippewa, Louise Erdrich was born on July 6, 1954 in Little Falls, Minnesota, the daughter of Ralph and Rita Erdrich, both of whom were employed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Erdrich's heritage may explain her focus and interest in the Native Americans who populate her writing. In speaking of her childhood, Erdrich relates how her father used to give her a nickel for every story she wrote and her mother would provide construction paper for book covers. She always felt like a published author. In 1981 Erdrich married Native American author Michael Dorris and together they published The World's Greatest Fisherman, which won the Nelson Algren Award in 1982. In 1984 she won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Love Medicine, which is an expansion of the story she cowrote with Dorris. Love Medicine was also awarded the Virginia McCormick Scully Prize (1984), the Sue Kaufman Prize (1985) and the Los Angeles Times Award for best novel (1985). In addition to her prose, Erdrich has written several volumes of poetry, a textbook, and short stories and essays for popular magazines. She has been the recipient of numerous awards for professional excellence, including the National Magazine Fiction Award in 1983 and a first-prize O. Henry Award in 1987. Erdrich has also taught writing at Johns Hopkins University and Dartmouth College.

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Additional Info

Imprint

HarperCollins

Filesize

1.14 MB

Number of Pages

384

eBook ISBN

9780060005627

Awards

  • Book Sense Book of the Year
  • Library Journal Best Books of the Year
  • Minnesota Book Awards
  • National Book Awards
  • New York Times Notable Books of the Year

Excerpt from: The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich

PROLOGUE
THE OLD PRIEST

1996

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. Father Damien's best hours were late at night and just after rising, when all he'd had to break his fast was a cup of hot water. He was old, very old, but alert until he had to eat. Dressed in his antique cassock, he sat in his favorite chair, contemplating the graveyard that spread just past the ragged yard behind his retirement house and up a low hill. His thoughts seemed to penetrate sheer air, the maze of tree branches waving above the stones, clouds, sky, even time itself, and they surged from his brain, tense, quickly, one on the next until he'd eaten his tiny meal of toast and coffee. Just after, Father Damien's mind relaxed. His habit was then to doze again, often straight into his afternoon nap.

A period of waking confusion plagued him, usually before the supper hour, sometimes and most embarrassingly while he said late afternoon Saturday Mass. When lucid again, Father Damien repaired for the evening to his desk, a place from which he refused to be disturbed. There, he wrote fierce political attacks, reproachful ecclesiastical letters, memoirs of reservation life for history journals, and poetry. He also composed lengthy documents, which he called reports, to send to the Pope -- he had in fact addressed every pontiff since he had come to the reservation in 1912. During his writing, Father Damien drank a few drops of wine, and usually, by the time he was ready for bed, he was what he called "pacified." This night, however, the wine had the opposite effect -- it sharpened instead of dulled his fervor, sped instead of slowed the point of his cracked plastic pen, focused his mind.


To His Holiness, the Pope
The Vatican, Rome, Italy

The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

From the pen of

Father Damien Modeste


Your Holiness, I speak to you from a terrible distance. I have so much to tell you, and so little time. A desperate gravity has hold of me these days. I am sure that my death must at last be near. That is why I address you with such familiarity and in such haste. Please forgive my awkwardness. I don't have time to revise!

My hand is distressingly shaky, but legible enough, I hope

I have no idea whether any of my previous letters have reached you -- the body of my correspondence stretches back over the course of this century, but those most recent are, naturally, addressed to you. My letters contain documented evidence from a variety of sources, including actual confessions. I kept the identity of one murderer, in fact, a secret, an anguish I taste even now. Aternus Pater, you have in your possession enough material to fill at least several vaults of file cabinets. Dare I hope, since this will be the last of my reports, that at long last you will see fit to answer