Discovering a cache of valuable Native American artifacts while appraising an estate in New Hampshire, Faye Travers investigates the history of a ceremonial drum, which possesses spiritual powers and changes the lives of people who encounter it. - (Baker & Taylor)

Discovering a cache of valuable Native American artifacts while appraising a family estate in New Hampshire, Faye Travers investigates the history of a ceremonial drum, which possesses spiritual powers and changes the lives of people who encounter it. By the author of Love Medicine. 100,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)

When a woman named Faye Travers is called upon to appraise the estate of a family in her small New Hampshire town, she isn't surprised to discover a forgotten cache of valuable Native American artifacts. After all, the family descends from an Indian agent who worked on the North Dakota Ojibwe reservation that is home to her mother's family. However, she stops dead in her tracks when she finds in the collection a rare drum—a powerful yet delicate object, made from a massive moose skin stretched across a hollow of cedar, ornamented with symbols she doesn't recognize and dressed in red tassels and a beaded belt and skirt—especially since, without touching the instrument, she hears it sound. And so begins an illuminating journey both backward and forward in time, following the strange passage of a powerful yet delicate instrument, and revealing the extraordinary lives it has touched and defined.

Compelling and unforgettable, bestselling author Louise Erdrich's Painted Drum explores the often fraught relationship between mothers and daughters, the strength of family, and the intricate rhythms of grief with all the grace, wit, and startling beauty that characterizes this acclaimed author's finest work.

'Haunted and haunting. . . . With fearlessness and humility, in a narrative that flows more artfully than ever between destruction and rebirth, 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 Book World

From the author of the National Book Award Winner The Round House, Louise Erdrich's breathtaking, lyrical novel of a priceless Ojibwe artifact and the effect it has had on those who have come into contact with it over the years.

While appraising the estate of a New Hampshire family descended from a North Dakota Indian agent, Faye Travers is startled to discover a rare moose skin and cedar drum fashioned long ago by an Ojibwe artisan. And so begins an illuminating journey both backward and forward in time, following the strange passage of a powerful yet delicate instrument, and revealing the extraordinary lives it has touched and defined.

Compelling and unforgettable, Louise Erdrich's Painted Drum explores the often-fraught relationship between mothers and daughters, the strength of family, and the intricate rhythms of grief with all the grace, wit, and startling beauty that characterizes this acclaimed author's finest work.

“Haunted and haunting. . . . With fearlessness and humility, in a narrative that flows more artfully than ever between destruction and rebirth, 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 Book World

From the author of the National Book Award Winner The Round House, Louise Erdrich's breathtaking, lyrical novel of a priceless Ojibwe artifact and the effect it has had on those who have come into contact with it over the years.

While appraising the estate of a New Hampshire family descended from a North Dakota Indian agent, Faye Travers is startled to discover a rare moose skin and cedar drum fashioned long ago by an Ojibwe artisan. And so begins an illuminating journey both backward and forward in time, following the strange passage of a powerful yet delicate instrument, and revealing the extraordinary lives it has touched and defined.

Compelling and unforgettable, Louise Erdrich's Painted Drum explores the often-fraught relationship between mothers and daughters, the strength of family, and the intricate rhythms of grief with all the grace, wit, and startling beauty that characterizes this acclaimed author's finest work.

When a woman named Faye Travers is called upon to appraise the estate of a family in her small New Hampshire town, she isn't surprised to discover a forgotten cache of valuable Native American artifacts. After all, the family descends from an Indian agent who worked on the North Dakota Ojibwe reservation that is home to her mother's family. However, she stops dead in her tracks when she finds in the collection a rare drum -- a powerful yet delicate object, made from a massive moose skin stretched across a hollow of cedar, ornamented with symbols she doesn't recognize and dressed in red tassels and a beaded belt and skirt -- especially since, withouttouching the instrument, she hears it sound.

From Faye's discovery, we trace the drum's passage both backward and forward in time, from the reservation on the northern plains to New Hampshire and back. Through the voice of Bernard Shaawano, an Ojibwe, we hear how his grandfather fashioned the drum after years of mourning his young daughter's death, and how it changes the lives of those whose paths its crosses. And through Faye we hear of her anguished relationship with a local sculptor, who himself mourns the loss of a daughter, and of the life she has made alone with her mother, in the shadow of the death of Faye's sister.

Through these compelling voices, The Painted Drum explores the strange power that lost children exert on the memories of those theyleave behind, and as the novel unfolds, its elegantly crafted narrative comes to embody the intricate, transformative rhythms of human grief. One finds throughout the grace and wit, the captivating prose and surprising beauty, that characterize Louise Erdrich's finest work.

Booklist Reviews

/*Starred Review*/ Erdrich's nine-volume cycle of novels revolving around an Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota has always carried within it a deep faith in the sacredness of the world and of the stories we tell one another. Her fiction looks fearlessly at the harshest experiences and finds within them both mystery and meaning. In her latest, former drug addict Faye Travers is an estate appraiser living in a small New Hampshire town. Faye, a thoroughly modern woman, has always regarded the Native American part of her background with a certain wariness. But her reserve crumbles when, upon being called to sell the possessions of the descendants of an Indian reservation agent, she finds a rare and valuable drum. She impulsively takes it home, where it wakes her at night with its haunting sounds. She tracks it back to the Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota, discovering how it was bartered away for alcohol. The drum was originally made by a grieving father in tribute to his young daughter, who was eaten by wolves. Once the drum is given back to its rightful owner, it plays a crucial role in guiding three young children, left alone in a freezing house with no food, to safety. It also serves to connect Faye to her heritage and to her deepest emotions. All of the voices that weave in and out of this narrative are, by turns, mournful and funny, rueful and proud, and always, even within the bleakest of circumstances, full of hope. If, for Erdrich, the reservation is the place of original sin, it is also the place of final redemption. ((Reviewed June 1 & 15, 2005)) Copyright 2005 Booklist Reviews.

Kirkus Reviews

The eponymous Native American object vibrates powerfully-as both instrument and symbol-in this tenth volume in Erdrich's epic Ojibwe saga.The drum is found, in a New Hampshire farmhouse following a sudden death, by Faye Travers, a middleaged divorcée of mixed ethnic origin, whose complicated personal life dominates the novel's expository opening section. She's a former drug user, now living with her mother Elsie and sharing the duties of Elsie's "estates business"; the lover of a moody German sculptor, and an assiduous observer and considerer of birds, other natural phenomena and persistent memories of her younger sister Netta's accidental death in childhood. Reasoning that the drum-found among a white family's possessions-was "stolen from our own people," Faye absconds with it, then travels west with Elsie to the Ojibwe reservation to which they'll return it. The drum then "tells" its story, in three interconnected narratives. The first details the sundering of "old Shaawano's" family when his wife Anaquot, "burning" with love for another man, flees with her illegitimate baby and older daughter, inadvertently sacrificing a child's life to a pack of starving wolves. The second relates further consequences of Anaquot's folly, then tells how Shaawano, inspired and burdened by "visions" of a dead child, painstakingly fashions the drum ("a container for the spirit, just as if it were flesh and bone"). The third story reveals how, two generations later, the drum sounds again, and three children left alone in a freezing house and subsequently lost in frigid darkness, hear its "healing" music. Erdrich draws us into her exquisitely detailed world effortlessly, and even this novel's frequent excesses of summary cannot blunt the power of its narrative ingenuity and luminous prose. The worlds of ancestry and tradition, humans and animals (notably, wolves and ravens), living and remembering and dreaming, are here rendered here with extraordinary clarity and insistent emotional impact.Hard to believe, but Erdrich just keeps getting better. Copyright Kirkus 2005 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.

Library Journal Reviews

Painted, beaded, and tasseled, the huge moose-skin drum that appraiser Faye Travers discovers in a collection of Native American artifacts speaks to her directly-she hears its song without playing it. With an eight-city tour. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal Reviews

At the heart of Erdrich's new work is a massive, heavily ornamented drum. Faye Travers, who steals it from an estate she's called in to appraise, can hear it without touching it. As Faye and her mother track down the drum's history, they uncover the early years of Fleur Pillager, an enduring character in the Erdrich pantheon (e.g., Tracks). On a North Dakota reservation, Bernard Shaawano explains how his grandmother, Anaquot, abandoned her family for love of Simon Jack, taking the infant Fleur with her; Anaquot's older daughter is thrown (or throws herself) to the wolves following the wagon. Through a vision, Bernard's grieving grandfather learns that his task is to construct the drum. And a powerful drum it is-Simon Jack drops dead as he dances around it the wrong way-but the story is not quite so powerful. Its parts do not hang together easily, and those set in the present don't seem to engage Erdrich's formidable imagination. But passages of stark and painful beauty remain: the sacrifice of Anaquot's daughter, Anaquot's sly dealings with her lover's wife, Simon Jack's death. They may not be enough to hold everyone, but they will certainly hold Erdrich fans. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/05.]-Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly Reviews

Though Erdrich's latest lyrical novel returns to Ojibwe territory (Four Souls; Love Medicine, etc.), it departs from the concentrated vigor of her best work in its breadth of storytelling. Erdrich essays the grief that comes when the sins of parents become mortal for their children. Native American antiquities specialist Faye Travers, bereaved of her sister and father, ambivalently in love with a sculptor who has lost his wife and loses his daughter, stumbles onto a ceremonial drum when she handles the estate of John Jewett Tatro, whose grandfather was an agent at the Ojibwe reservation. Under its spell, she secrets it away and eventually repatriates it to that reservation on the northern plains-the home of her grandmother. The drum is revived, as are those around it. Gracefully weaving many threads, Erdrich details the multigenerational history surrounding the drum. Despite her elegant story and luminous prose, many of the characters feel sketchy compared to Erdrich's previous titans, and several redemptions seem too pat. But even at low voltage, Erdrich crafts a provocative read elevated by beautiful imagery, as when children near death fly off like skeletal ravens. (Sept.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.