The Master Butchers Singing Club Overview
In Louise Erdrich's novel The Master Butchers Singing Club, in the wake of World War I, Fidelis Waldvogel starts a new life for himself, his wife Eva, and sons Franz, Markus, Emil, and Erich, in Argus, North Dakota, after leaving his German homeland. Not long after establishing a butchery, Waldvogel's Meats, the family becomes acquainted with a local woman named Delphine Watzka. Delphine soon becomes an integral part of the Waldvogel family and business. Despite the community members' kinship with one another, all is not safe and peaceful in Argus. When Delphine discovers the bodies of a local family in father's cellar, a litany of unsolved mysteries begins to surface and threaten the town's dynamic. The novel spans the decades between World War I and World War II, and explores themes including survival, loss, and grief.
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The Master Butchers Singing Club Study Guide
Louise Erdrich Biographies (6)
2,021 words, approx. 7 pages
Once named one of People magazine's most beautiful people, Louise Erdrich (born 1954) is a Native American writer with a wide popular appeal. She is no literary lightweight, however, having drawn comp...
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5,792 words, approx. 20 pages
Like William Faulkner and his Yoknapatawpha County, American writer Louise Erdrich has created her own mythical landscape in and around Argus, a fictional Red River Valley reservation town on the Minn...
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4,392 words, approx. 15 pages
The families Louise Erdrich first introduced in a short story, "The World's Greatest Fishermen" (1982) -- the Kashpaws, the Lamartines, the Pillagers, and the Morrisseys -- have also appeared in four ...
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8,776 words, approx. 30 pages
Louise Erdrich is one of the most important contemporary Native American writers. She writes poetry and some of the most sophisticated fiction and nonfiction being produced in the United States; her n...
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6,008 words, approx. 21 pages
The writings of Louise Erdrich not only reflect her multilayered, complex background but also confound a variety of literary genre and cultural categories. Although she is known primarily as a success...
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6,457 words, approx. 22 pages
Biography EssayThe writings of Louise Erdrich not only reflect her multilayered, complex background but also confound a variety of literary genre and cultural categories. Although she is known primari...
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