In the meantime, Pauline has also left Argus. Together, the family faces trials of hunger, tribal conflict, and ultimately the loss of their land to the government. Throughout the novel, Margaret and Nanapush, whom Fleur regards as a father, also develop an intimate relationship. A new family unit begins to form at the Pillager home – Fleur, Eli and their daughter, Lulu, as well as Eli's mother, Margaret, and her second son, Nector. Soon, Fleur begins to show signs that she is pregnant and, although the true paternity is unknown, Eli takes responsibility of the child as his own. Much to his mother's dismay, Eli falls in love with Fleur and moves in with her. Mysteriously, no one in town is harmed in the storm with the exception of the men who raped her – whose bodies are found locked in the freezer of the butcher shop, where they had taken refuge.įleur returns to her family home on the reservation, where she meets Eli Kashpaw while hunting in the woods one day. She leaves town, but the next day a tornado strikes Argus. After beating a group of men from the shop one night at a game of poker, Fleur is beaten and raped. The next year, Fleur goes to the nearby town of Argus and takes a job at a butcher's shop, where she meets Pauline Puyat – the novel's second narrator. Because of their shared grief at losing so many from their community, Nanapush and Fleur develop a friendship and begin to see one another as family.
Nanapush first meets Fleur in 1912 when he rescues her in the middle of winter and nurses her back to health from consumption – a recent epidemic among the Anishinaabe. Nanapush, therefore, narrates the story in attempt to reconcile mother and daughter by telling Lulu about the events between 19 that led Fleur to her decision. Because of this, Lulu is now estranged from her mother.
When Lulu was ten years old, her mother, Fleur Pillager, sent her away to a government school. In Nanapush's chapters the point of view is that of Nanapush telling stories to his granddaughter, Lulu, several years after the main events in the novel occur. Tracks alternates between two narrators: Nanapush, a jovial tribal elder, and Pauline, a young girl of mixed heritage. As in many of her other novels, Erdrich employs the use of multiple first-person narratives to relate the events of the plot, alternating between Nanapush, a tribal patriarch, and Pauline, a young girl of mixed heritage. Within the saga, Tracks is earliest chronologically, providing the back-story of several characters such as Lulu Lamartine and Marie Kashpaw who become prominent in the other novels. It is the third in a tetralogy of novels beginning with Love Medicine that explores the interrelated lives of four Anishinaabe families living on an Indian reservation near the fictional town of Argus, North Dakota. Tracks is a novel by Louise Erdrich, published in 1988.
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