The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

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The Barnes & Noble Review
In her critically acclaimed novels, award-winning author Louise Erdrich delves deeply into the contentious duality of her German-American and Turtle Mountain Ojibwe heritage to illuminate the stories of Native American families. Spanning the 20th century from 1910 to 1996, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse centers on the triune figure of Father Damien Modeste -- born Agnes DeWitt, entered holy orders as Sister Cecilia, baptized and reborn to the priesthood in a body-and-soul-cleansing flood. True to the promise of the title, miracles do abound in this epic tale, not the least of which is the surprising and affecting poetry of Erdrich's prose. But there are subtler miracles recorded in Father Damien's long and voluminous correspondence -- or, more appropriately, "reports" -- to the Holy See, miracles that raise discomforting questions about the nature of faith, sainthood, and the role of the church in the unraveling of Native American cultures.

When at last the Vatican does send an envoy to the tiny North Dakota reservation, it is not the longed-for response to Father Damien's epistles but rather a canonical inquiry, a "speculation regarding the Blessedness" of one Sister Leopolda Puyat. A demanding and often cruel taskmaster in life, in death Sister Leopolda has been credited with an ever increasing number of intercessions -- from record honey harvests to the spontaneous remission of incurable diseases. Now more than 100 years old, the Tiresius-like Father Damien alone knows the disturbing truth about Sister Leopolda. But in revealing the mortal secrets that have long bound their lives together, he risks exposing his own great lie -- "the true lie...the most sincere lie a person could tell" -- and undoing a lifetime of service to his church and to his congregation.

Although at times marred by the sort of meandering digressions and haphazard plotting that have always been Erdrich's weakness, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse ultimately succeeds on the strength of its ecstatic prose, unforgettable characterizations, and compassionate portrayal of the human tragicomedy. (Greg Marrs)

Michiko Kakutani

“A deeply affecting narrative . . . by turns comical and elegiac, farcical, and tragic.”

Minneapolis St. Paul Magazine

"You will be dazzled by the poetry of her language and her lighteninglike illuminations of the human condition."

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"Bold and imaginative."

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Stunning …a moving meditation … infused with mystery and wonder."

USA Today

“[Erdrich’s] best so far…told with such cleverness and compassion that the effect is nothing less than dazzling.”

Elle

“Spellbinding…profoundly moving.”

St. Paul Star-Tribune

"A magnificent storyteller … delivering musical prose charged by powerful metaphors."

Wall Street Journal

"Funny, engrossing and revelatory."

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Stunning …a moving meditation … infused with mystery and wonder."

USA Today

“[Erdrich’s] best so far…told with such cleverness and compassion that the effect is nothing less than dazzling.”

Elle

“Spellbinding…profoundly moving.”

St. Paul Star-Tribune

"A magnificent storyteller … delivering musical prose charged by powerful metaphors."

Los Angeles Times Book Review

What shines most brilliantly through its pages are Erdrich's intelligence and compassion.

USA Today

[Erdrich's] best so far. … told with such cleverness and compassion that the effect is nothing less than dazzling.

Minneapolis St. Paul Magazine

You will be dazzled by the poetry of her language and her lighteninglike illuminations of the human condition.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Stunning …a moving meditation … infused with mystery and wonder.

Boston Sunday Globe

Lyrical … a lavishly written, diffusely plotted novel about the passion - both religious and carnal - of Father Damien.

Wall Street Journal

Funny, engrossing and revelatory.

St. Paul Star-Tribune

A magnificent storyteller … delivering musical prose charged by powerful metaphors.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Bold and imaginative.

Verlyn Klinkenborg

[B]eguiling . . . Erdrich takes us farther back in time than she ever has, so far back that she comes, in a sense, to the edge of the reservation that has been her fictional world.
— New York Times Book Review

Thomas Curwen

Messy, ribald, deeply tragic, preposterous and heartfelt, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse is a love story, and what shine most brilliantly through its pages are Erdrich's intelligence and compassion. Let the world shake, buckle, storm and burn. Let the people suffer, as they will. It is our connections to the past and the future, through families and connections to kin, that grant us our saintliness and our transcendent power.
— Los Angeles Times

Elle

Spellbinding…profoundly moving.

Los Angeles Times Book Review

What shines most brilliantly through its pages are Erdrich's intelligence and compassion.

Boston Sunday Globe

Lyrical ... a lavishly written, diffusely plotted novel about the passion - both religious and carnal - of Father Damien.

USA Today

[Erdrich's] best so far. ... told with such cleverness and compassion that the effect is nothing less than dazzling.

Wall Street Journal

Funny, engrossing and revelatory.

Minneapolis St. Paul Magazine

You will be dazzled by the poetry of her language and her lightening-like illuminations of the human condition.

St. Paul Star-Tribune

A magnificent storyteller ... delivering musical prose charged by powerful metaphors.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Stunning ...a moving meditation ... infused with mystery and wonder.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Bold and imaginative.

Michiko Kakutani

A deeply affecting narrative … by turns comical and elegiac, farcical and tragic. —New York Times

Publishers Weekly

Erdrich seems to be inhabiting her characters, so intense and viscerally rendered are her portrayals. Her prose shimmers: a piano being carried across the plains is "an ebony locust." This novel will be remembered for a cornucopia of set pieces, all bizarre and stunning: wounded and taken hostage by a bank robber and pinned to the running board of his Overland automobile, Agnes, "her leg a flare of blood," briefly touches hands with her astonished lover as the car crosses his path; old man Nanapush, impaled on fish hooks that pin him to a boat that's hitched to the antlers of a wounded moose, careens through the woods in delirious exhaustion. Writing with subtle compassion and magical imagination, Erdrich has done justice to the complexities of existence in general and Native American life in particular. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Erdrich returns to a world created through the last dozen years and five novels to view a century's worth of Ojibwe suffering via the letters and memoirs of Father Damien Modeste. One major surprise of the book is revealed right at the start as the elderly priest is revealed to be a woman, but other mysteries of faith and sainthood are explored in "his" letters and richly detailed flashbacks. The twists and turns of gender, belief, and love are woven through beautifully crafted passages filled with deep sorrow and loss. Erdrich's focus is as much on the physical as the divine in the evolving conflicts between church and mysticism, history and legend, and truth and faith. The question of whether Sister Leopolda deserves to be a saint may be the storyteller's quest, but the tale's ultimate resonance is the tragic strength of its characters. Narrator Anna Fields may tend to rush from section to section, but she handles the complexity of changing voices and identities well. A sad and difficult work; recommended. Joyce Kessel, Villa Maria Coll., Buffalo, NY Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

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(aparagon 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. Comparisons to Willa Cather (particularly her Death Comes for the Archbishop) as well as Faulkner now seem perfectly just. That's how good Erdrich has become.