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The
2003 Award
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The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by
Louise Erdrich Nominated by:
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Publisher of Nominated Edition: HarperCollins 0060187271 |
| the complete A-Z listing of nominated authors. |
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ABOUT
THE BOOK
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| For
more than half a century, Father Damien Modeste has served his beloved people,
the Ojibwe, on the remote reservation of Little No Horse. Compelled to his
task by a direct mystical experience, Father Damien has made enormous sacrifices,
and experienced the joys of commitment as well as deep suffering. Now, nearing
the end of his life, Father Damien dreads the discovery of his physical
identity, for he is a woman who has lived as a man. He imagines the undoing
of all that he has accomplished - sees unions sundered, baptisms nullified,
those who confessed to him once again unforgiven. 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 these facts are bound up in his own secret. In relating his history and that of Leopolda, whose wonder-working is documented but inspired, he believes, by a capacity for evil rather than the love of good, Father Damien is forced to choose: should he reveal all he knows and risk everything? Or should he manufacture a protective history? In spinning out the tale of his life, Father Damien in fact does both. His story encompasses his life as a young woman, her passions, and the pestilence, tribal hatreds, and sorrows passed from generation to generation of Ojibwe. From the fantastic truth of Father Damien's origin as a woman to the hilarious account of the absurd demise of Nanapush, his best friend on the reservation, his story ranges over the span of the century. |
| ABOUT THE AUTHOR |
| Louise Erdrich grew up in North Dakota, USA and is a mixed blood enrolled in the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe. She is the author of seven novels, including the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Love Medicine, as well as poetry, children's books, and a memoir of early motherhood, The Bluejay's Dance. Her short fiction has won the National Magazine Award and is included in the O.Henry and Best American collections. She lives in Minnesota with her children, who help her run a small independent bookstore called The Birchbark. |
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