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Background
Four Souls as it is currently known was first published in 2004. Erdrich’s original intentions had been to place Fleur’s story in an extended revised version of Tracks, but eventually decided to write Four Souls instead, giving an entire novel to Fleur’s journey and leaving the plot of Tracks as is. Woven throughout Four Souls, and many of the novels concerning themselves with Erdrich’s fictional reservation is a very real history that continues to affect her characters long after the actual events. As in history, the Ojibwe people within her novels faced the appropriation of land by the government, removal, and the allotment process meant to encourage farming and eventual assimilation. During this time, there was also the outbreaks of the diseases brought with settlers, most notably the diseases that can be presumed to be smallpox and possibly tuberculosis.

Within Four Souls, Erdrich uses her Ojibwe ancestry to give a strong sense of realism to each character and their lives. An obvious instance of such would be the inclusion of Nanapush, who has the elements of the Native American “Trickster character’s variability, contradictory nature, and humor that is especially noted among Ojibwe writers”. Erdrich also uses various Ojibwe terms and phrases throughout the perspective of Ojibwe narrators, though that has led to some criticism from other writers.

Chapters 1-4
The first four chapters alternate between narration by Nanapush and Polly Elizabeth, John Mauser’s sister-in-law, with Polly Elizabeth narrating chapters two and four. Nanapush continues to narrate the odd-numbered chapters with Polly Elizabeth and Margaret narrating the even-numbered chapters. The story opens with Fleur walking towards the city where Mauser lives. Mauser has stripped Fleur’s land of the trees there, and she leaves on foot to get her revenge. Fleur does not follow the roads or well-known trails but travels fields and woods. Before entering the city, Fleur buries the bones of her ancestors and takes on her mother’s secret name, “Four Souls”.

Once Fleur arrives in the city, she makes her way to the house Mauser had built, presumably with the trees from her land. She arrives just in time to be given a job as a laundress by Polly Elizabeth, Mauser’s sister-in-law as the former laundress had quit the day before. Here we learn that Mauser has been suffering from debilitating convulsions and sickness that has left him unable to even manage his own house. Polly Elizabeth now manages that, as well as trying to keep an eye on the amount of painkiller given to him. This soon changes as Fleur begins to treat Mauser, not out of kindness, but because she wants him to suffer at her hands, not at the mercy of a disease.

The effects of her ministrations soon show, and Mauser begins to regain his clarity of mind and strength of body. While this is going on, Fleur begins to explore the house and keep watch of his movements, especially at night, but she is eventually caught by Mauser who grows interested in her. This does not go unnoticed by Polly Elizabeth, but it does go unaddressed by Placide, his wife and Polly’s sister, who spends her time painting. The depth of discord within the house is revealed when the doctor summoned by Mauser blames his affliction on “the damming of the sperm” due to the practice of Karezza, which incidentally, also thwarts Polly Elizabeth’s desire for a nephew or niece to spoil as she has no children of her own.

Genre
Four Souls is an entry into the fictional Tracks series, written after The Master Butcher’s Singing Club in 2003 and before The Painted Drum in 2005 and taking place on the fictional reservation Little No Horse, according to her book The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse. The events of Four Souls are considered to take place after Tracks, which itself takes place long after the events of The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, though it was written first.

Like many of her other novels, especially the Tracks series, Erdrich uses a blend of “intertextuality, multiple perspectives, and temporal dislocation” to create the narrative of Four Souls. Many consider this to be a post-modernist style and find Erdrich’s works to be highly reminiscent of William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County stories due to the highly interconnected relationships and characters within her novels.