Four Souls & Tracks

Two Novels

De: Louise Erdrich

Narrado por: Anna Fields

In the world of interconnected novels by Louise Erdrich, Four Souls is most closely linked to Tracks. All these works continue and elaborate on the intricate story of life on a reservation peopled by saints and false saints, heroes and sinners, clever fools and tenacious women. Louise Erdrich reminds us of the deep spirituality and the ordinary humanity of this world, and these works are as beautiful and lyrical as anything she has written.

Tracks
Set in North Dakota, Tracks is a tale of passion and deep unrest. Over the course of 10 crucial years, as tribal land and trust between people erode ceaselessly, men and women are pushed to the brink of their endurance, yet their pride and humor prohibit surrender. The listener will experience shock and pleasure in encountering characters that are compelling and rich in their vigor, clarity, and indomitable vitality.

Four Souls
A strange and compelling woman decides to leave home, and the story begins. Fleur Pillager takes her mother's name, Four Souls, for strength and walks from her Ojibwe reservation to the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. She is seeking restitution from and revenge on the lumber baron who has stripped her reservation. But revenge is never simple, and she quickly finds her intentions complicated by her own dangerous compassion for the man who wronged her.

©1988, 2004 Louise Erdrich (P)2004 HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

The two unreliable narrators, the beautiful imagery, the sad reality of Native American people

Louise Erdrich has written a powerful story here. As you switch between the two narratives of a proud Native American and a turn-tail woman, you begin to get a feel for the hopeless nature of native magic.

Better than television

It was so well read I could see my own movie production in my head.

Magnificent! One of the great novels !

Magnificent one of the great American novels
I read this many years ago and wanted to hear it read out loud

Lovely language describing the ugliest truths and sorrows of this land !

good story

I really liked this book. The story gripped me from the beginning and was strong all tge way through but the ending was very lacking.

Companion stories for Little No Horse fans

Long live Nanapush! My favorite character in Erdrich’s Love Medicine books!

The narrator (who also reads The Last Report of Little No Horse) changes voices for characters, which was jarring at first but I got used to it. She captures the characters’ personalities well. And there are moments of hilarity that she reads in a perfect Nanapush deadpan.

I’m really glad I listened to the LNH twice before I listened to this. I recommend listening to LNH first or reviewing it on Wikipedia if it’s been awhile. The stories run parallel to LNH, share perspectives from characters who are only observed in LNH.

My only complaint is that it was very frustrating to realize that the way they are presented on this recording is backwards both in time and sequence of publication. And even more
frustrating! you can’t see in the chapter list where one book ends and the next begins!

It sort of worked for me though because Erdrich tells her tales in circles, spirals and parallels. If I had to read nothing but Erdrich for the rest of my life I would die satisfied!

filling out familiar characters

A deeper look at the lives, experiences, and motivations of characters we've come to love in other of her books.

Read in the order published!

Would you listen to Four Souls & Tracks again? Why?

I listened to Tracks after reading Love Medicine for a class. Due to the surprises Erdrich lips in, I recommend reading the books in the order they were written, not in chronological order. The detail she puts into her characters and stories is amazing!

Who was your favorite character and why?

I love Fleur. She's mysterious, strong, independent, and mischievous.

Engaging and. eloquent

This is so we'll written and read. The story is heavy and sad, funny, hopeless and hopeful and ultimately based in a truth that is still being told and lived.

My Erdrich favorites

Although I love all her novels, these two "origin stories" are my favorites and I was delighted to find them in audiobooks. The narrator, Anna Fields, has a rough voice that seemed so appropriate to me. I have been listening to these over and over. If you love the characters of Fleur and Nanapush, these are the books you want. My only criticism is one of format - the "chapters" as listed by the audiobooks actually are made up of multiple chapters from the printed books, something that makes it a bit more difficult to switch back and forth between the two. Cannot recommend highly enough.

Tracks and Four Souls

I cannot recommend these two linked short novels strongly enough. They have the power of lyric poetry, but there's also a strong narrative thread. They deal with broad issues of family and extended family, race, love, fear, revenge, and more specific issues of native land and its usurpation. The politics of gender, race, ecology are dealt with in ways that manage to be comic as well as tragic, and are never ever simplistic. Similarly, the conclusions are poignant and life-affirming. I am (forgive the pun) tracking down the rest of the novels. How come I had read so little of Erdrich's work in the past?