Our lady who art in Kenwood seems to have an endless supply of spooky and captivating tales that read like campfire legends. Her Native American characters often have one foot in the modern world and the other in a misty, spirit-populated Indian landscape that is quickly disappearing. The heroines in her latest book are a thoroughly modern mother and daughter who run an estate sale business that specializes in Indian objects. When a traditional drum is uncovered in an attic, a chilling story unfolds that explains its creation, and its powers to save youngsters in trouble. Dead children haunt this story and the community it’s set in, but in Erdrich’s world, ghosts can both help and heal the living; the drum, ultimately, is a gift that reconnects a modern Indian community with its ancestors.
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