The Painted Drum

(Paperback)

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From the winner of the National Book Award for Fiction, 2012 comes this elegantly crafted novel that explores the strange power that lost children exert on the memories of those they leave behind
When Faye Travers is sent to appraise a family estate in a small New Hampshire town and comes across a forgotten set of valuable Native American artefacts, she is not surprised by the discovery. However, she is shocked when she finds a rare drum particularly because without even touching the instrument she hears its deep resonant sound.

Following the discovery, we trace the drum's passage both backwards and forwards in time. We hear the voice of Bernard Shaawano, an Ojibwe, who tells of how his grandfather created the drum after years of mourning his younger daughter's death and how it changes the paths of those who cross it. Through Faye, we experience her anguished relationship with a local sculptor who also mourns the loss of a daughter, and witness the life Faye has made alone with her mother, in the shadow of her sister's death.

Erdich poetically captures the intricate, transformative rhythms of human grief that these losses create within her characters with grace, wit, captivating prose and surprising beauty.

Reviews

'Resonant, poetic and exact ! these visions will remain imprinted on the reader's mind.' Los Angeles Times 'Intricate and beautifully written.' Boston Globe 'With fearlessness and humility, Erdrich has opened herself to possibilities beyond what we merely see -- to the dead alive and busy, to the breath of trees and the souls of wolves -- and inspires readers to open their hearts to these mysteries as well.' Washington Post 'Spare, perceptive, unsentimental.' New York Times

Author Bio

Louise Erdrich is one of the most gifted, prolific, and challenging of American novelists. Born in 1954 in Minnesota, she grew up mostly in North Dakota, where her parents taught at Bureau of Indian Affairs schools. Her fiction reflects aspects of her mixed heritage: German through her father, and French and Ojibwa through her mother. She is the author of six previous novels for adults, the first of which, 'Love Medicine', won the National Book Critics Circle Award. She lives in Minnesota with her children, who help her run a small independent bookstore called The Birchbark.