When the men who tried to save her die, the tribe assigns blame to Fleur. For example, people gossip that Fleur, who has drowned in the lake twice and lived, controls the monster that lives in the lake. Rumors and gossip continually swirl around Fleur because of her unusual strength, beauty, and life choices. Fleur, however, remains determined to live on her family’s land, and moves back to Matchimanito Lake, living on her own.

After she is orphaned at age 17 during the 1912 epidemic, Nanapush takes her in, saving her life. The central character in the novel is Fleur Pillager. Pauline turns to white religion Nanapush sticks to the old ways. Nanapush wants to survive and desires his adopted family to reunite. Pauline longs to be loved and to be thought special. Both narrators have something critical at stake in recounting their stories. In a similar way, Nanapush’s narrative, which seeks to persuade Lulu to accept her mother, remains suspect. Pauline desires to be like Fleur and despises her at the same time: her jealousy and obsession make her narrative viewpoint unreliable. Nanapush wants to persuade Lulu (his granddaughter) that her mother, Fleur, did not abandon her to the harsh environment of an Indian boarding school lightly. The points of view and events depicted by both narrators reveal their agendas. Nanapush begins narrating the novel as the second epidemic wipes out whole families, leaving many orphaned children as well as single adults, like Nanapush, who have lost their wives and children.

In two back-to-back epidemics-first smallpox and then tuberculosis-along with a treaty limiting their movement and assigning each clan an allotment of land, the Chippewa people were nearly wiped out by disease and starvation. Nanapush becomes a trusted and respected tribal elder, while Pauline becomes a Catholic nun whom many believe to be insane. Covering the years from 1912 to 1924, the events depicted through the two narrators’ visions both echo and contradict each other. Two narrators alternate to tell the story of twelve years in the history of the tribe: Nanapush, a tribal elder, and Pauline, a young orphan girl.

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