From Library Journal
A German soldier straggles home from World War I, marries his best friend's pregnant widow, then picks up a set of butcher knives and heads for North Dakota, where he founds a singing club and encounters the passionate Delphine Watzka. If anyone can make a butcher sing, it's Erdrich.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Although death looms large in Erdrich's emotionally powerful, richly detailed new novel, it does so in a "world where butchers sing like angels." The indomitable Fidelis Waldvogel walks home from World War I and marries Eva, the pregnant widow of his best friend, who was killed in combat. Carrying a suitcase full of butcher knives, he immigrates to America and settles in Argus, North Dakota (a fictional town familiar from Erdrich's previous novels). Endlessly resourceful Delphine Watzka has attempted to put Argus and her childhood (devoted to ministering to her father, Roy, a hopeless alcoholic) behind her by joining the circus as a human table for a balancing act. Although she deeply loves her balancing partner, Cyprian, she senses a barrier between them that prevents them from truly connecting. Returning to Argus, she takes a job at Fidelis' butcher shop, where she makes a friend for life in the hardworking Eva, eventually nursing her through a death by cancer and finally finding the love of her life in Fidelis. Erdrich gives us one of her finest characters in the radiant Delphine, who is possessed of an immense generosity of spirit, while also creating a host of truly remarkable secondary characters: loyal Cyprian, mournful Roy, the eccentric ragpicker Step-and-a-Half. In mesmerizing prose, Erdrich meticulously re-creates the brutal work of the slaughterhouse and the lithe grace of the circus troupe and then counterpoints this physical world with transcendent moments of human connection. It's clear that Erdrich, one of our finest writers, is working at the very peak of her considerable powers. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
“A substantial, beautifully composed, confident work of art … both expansive in its reach and intimate in its intense focus.” — O magazine
“An enrapturing plunge into the depths of the human heart.” — Washington Post Book World
“[A] magnificent tale...poignant in the mysteries it evokes and patient with the questions it leaves unanswered.” — Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Miraculous …[Erdrich is] at the peak of powers as a writer … Her work is as melodious as ever.” — Boston Globe
“Emotionally resonant.” — Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
“[A] masterpiece… Erdrich never hits a false note.” — Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“Louise Erdrich’s rousing and radiant new novel THE MASTER BUTCHERS SINGING CLUB is all kinds of lovely.” — Newsweek
“Each moment and its particulars dazzles … Fidelis and firm-bellied Delphine and the rest [of the characters] are masterworks.” — San Francisco Chronicle
“THE MASTER BUTCHERS SINGING CLUB can surely be cast as the most wrenching and wise of Erdrich’s nine novels.” — Miami Herald
“A brilliantly layered look at war’s costs …Daring, graceful, comprehending and, rooted in the great plains, uniquely American.” — Kansas City Star
“The Master Butchers Singing Club reveals on of our finest writers at the peak of her considerable powers.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Rich and vibrant …Magnificent.” — Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Lush and stark … employing vivid imagery, deft description and dialogue that flows … Stunning language.” — St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Not since Ricard Russo’s 2001 novel EMPIRE FALLS ... have I enjoyed the company of such memorable characters.” — Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today
“Louise Erdrich hits every note in THE MASTER BUTCHERS SINGING CLUB” — Vanity Fair
“Satisfying and life-affirming.” — Atlantic Monthly
“[THE MASTER BUTCHERS SINGING CLUB] is marked by moments of true creative genius, exquisitely imagined and masterfully drawn.” — Richmond Times-Dispatch
“Erdrich is an abundantly gifted storyteller, with a penchant for meticulous detail and tremendous empathy for her characters.” — Charlotte Observer
“Appropriately grim and thoughtful, THE MASTER BUTCHERS SINGING CLUB is also full of tenderness and life … Marvelous.” — Entertainment Weekly
“A thoughtful, artful, painfully moving addition to an ongoing American saga .. unimaginably rich.” — Kirkus Reviews
“Delphine, the book’s central figure, is Erdrich’s most finely wrought and compelling character.” — Denver Rocky Mountain News
“Grand and generous fiction… Erdrich’s most sweeping and ambitious yet.” — BookPage
From the Back Cover
What happens when a trained killer discovers that his true vocation is love? Having survived the killing fields of World War I, Fidelis Waldvogel returns home to his quiet German village and marries the pregnant widow of his best friend who was killed in action.
With a suitcase full of sausages and a master butcher's precious set of knives, Fidelis sets out for America, getting as far as North Dakota, where he builds a business, a home for his family—which includes Eva and four sons—and a singing club consisting of the best voices in town.
When the Old World meets the New—in the person of Del-phine Watzka—the great adventure of Fidelis's life begins. Delphine meets Eva and is enchanted; she meets Fidelis, and the ground trembles. These momentous encounters will determine the course of Delphine's life—and the trajectory of this brilliant new novel by Louise Erdrich
About the Author
Louise Erdrich, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, is the author of many novels as well as volumes of poetry, children’s books, and a memoir of early motherhood. Her novel The Round House won the National Book Award for Fiction. Love Medicine and LaRose received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. Erdrich lives in Minnesota with her daughters and is the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore. Her most recent book, The Night Watchman, won the Pulitzer Prize. A ghost lives in her creaky old house.
