The Painted Drum

All of Louise's books are quietly powerful. Her ability to make the ugly plainess of life fill up with grace is astounding. This applies to human behavior and the landscape we relate to. She allows for the sacred to exist even when the worst of human depravity must be endured and confronted. Her language reminds me of the Dakotas, the open sheet of land where nothing hides and all is blessed or damned under one sky. In the... Read Full Review

"The Painted Drum" is a marvelously crafted novel that traces the history of a drum and the people whose lives it touches. Primarily set in New Hampshire, the story opens with a quiet introspective contemplation by one of the novel's narrators. ". . . I am lost in my thoughts and pause too long where the cemetery road meets the two-lane highway. This distraction seems partly age, but there is more too, I think." This opening... Read Full Review

(No spoilers here.) In the opening pages, Faye Travers, an estate agent in New Hampshire, inventories the home of John Jewett Tatro, whose grandfather was an Indian agent, and whose grandmother was an Ojibwe. When Faye opens an attic room, she finds a collection of enormous value, including an incredible drum, hollowed out from a single piece of cedar wood and covered by a moose hide. The history of the "Little Girl" drum... Read Full Review

This is the type of book I miss...very rare: a true "story". A story of love, of misery, of hope. This is a story - not a formula. There is nothing shocking, fast-paced or hilarious. Just a story of a string of humans all touched by the same drum. This is what story-telling should be. I will remember this tale a long time. It won't run together with a bunch of other novels that are so similar I can't keep the characters or... Read Full Review

Voice performer Anna Fields faced a unique challenge in reading this intriguing story, and she succeeded beautifully. With seeming effortlessness she segues from one narrative voice to another, all the while delivering a well paced superbly nuanced performance. Links between the living and the dead are not unexplored subjects for Louise Erdrich. However, with The Painted Drum, the dead are all young girls. Faye... Read Full Review