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When Faye Travers, an estate agent in New Hampshire, goes to the home of John Jewett Tatro, she is hoping to find Indian artifacts that can be sold or donated to a museum, since Tatro's grandfather was an Indian agent, and his grandmother was an Ojibwe. When she 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. When the drum "speaks" to her, resonating with a single, deep note, she obeys its call and steals it, intending to return it to its rightful owner. The story of drum takes the reader from New Hampshire to an Ojibwe reservation in Minnesota. Bernard Shaawano, the grandson of the maker of the drum, narrates the history of the drum, and the reader learns about the life of Bernard's grandfather and his wife Anaquot, why he made the drum, who he was memorializing, and how this drum eventually came to New Hampshire. The fascinating process by which the drum was made, the ceremonies and traditional beliefs accompanying it, and the torment of its maker come to life through the traumatic history of the Shaawano family over three generations. In the final section, Shawnee, a young girl living in a remote area of the reservation, has been babysitting for her younger brother and sister for several bitterly cold days, without enough fuel and no food. Their mother has been sidetracked, drinking in town. As the children find themselves in ever more desperate straits, the drum enters their lives and offers hope. This "Little Girl Drum" has always been associated children. Bernard's grandfather and his wife, Anaquot, have suffered the terrible loss of a daughter. Faye Travers and her mother, related by blood to another child of Anaquot, have also suffered a terrible loss--the childhood death of Faye's young sister. For Shawnee, not part of either of these families, the drum exerts its power and offers hope. Written with a homey intimacy and honesty, Erdrich creates characters with real faults and real conflicts, but she is generous with them, never making value judgments and showing instead the circumstances which have made them who they are. Nature intimately affects their lives and is further emphasized through symbols and repeating motifs--a field of orb spiders, a dog which escapes its cruel confines, wolves and their mystical connection with mankind. Always, of course, Erdrich conveys Indian spiritual values, even as she depicts their often sad and limited lives. Tightly organized, with interconnected stories spanning three generations and involving three different families, The Painted Drum is a novel which taps into universal feelings and hopes, even as it depicts some of life's terrible realities. Mary Whipple
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