Shaawano's tale of the painted drum immediately seizes the reader. It was made to honor the heroism of a young daughter, and it remains spiritually functional for other brave little girls. , takes up the narrative thread and tells the heart-wrenching history of this drum. With Part II the story shifts to the Dakotas, "North of Hoopdance." Faye and her mother have brought the drum to its birthplace. It's more alive than a set of human bones." Heart-wrenching history A painted drum, especially, is considered a living thing and must be fed as the spirits are fed, with tobacco and a glass of water set nearby, sometimes a plate of food. The people who take their place at each side represent the spirits who sit at the four directions. Later, her mother clarifies: "The drum is the universe. Indeed, she is pulled enough to steal it. One deep, low, resonant note." A note no one else hears. "hen I step near the drum," Fay says, "I swear it sounds. It has been ceremoniously decorated and bears a yellow line down its middle. In Tatro's attic, among other Ojibwe artifacts of great value, Faye finds a mystical drum of hollowed cedar and moose skin. Even the German's resident ravens laugh they embody more spiritual significance than any other inhabitants of Revival Road (excepting the orchard spiders).įaye's plodding life finally pivots with the death and estate sale of John Jewett Tatro, whose grandfather was an Indian agent on the Ojibwe reservation. Peach-colored granite with flecks of angry mica." It must be the one-eighth Ojibwe blood that makes Faye detail her story with thick Native American animism. It's a breach of credibility.įaye sleeps periodically with a neighbor, a German artist, "a fire-breathing crank" who refuses to "see me as I am. "The story surfaces here, snarls there, as people live their disorder to its completion." Erdrich tries to sow suspense with these ominous, poetic observations, but she has put them into the mouth of Faye Travers - ex-addict, failed clothing saleswoman and abbreviated daughter. On Revival Road, sons and neighbors manage to do each other considerable harm. This is where we live, my mother and I, just where the road begins to tangle." "Uphill and left, a broad and well-kept piece of paving leads, as the trunk of a tree splits and diminishes, to ever narrower outgrowths of Revival Road. The two women run an estate sale business from their remote house on Revival Road. Middle-aged, childless Faye Travers lives in a New Hampshire village with her mother.
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