The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Erdrich, Louise. Antelope Woman. HarperCollins, 2016.

Erdrich’s novel is split into four parts with a total of 22 chapters. The omniscient first-person narrator is an Ojibwe reservation dog named Almost Soup, though his identity is not revealed until the start of Part 2. The beginning of each part is prefaced with pieces of a Native American legend about two magical twins who use beadwork to create the world. They compete against each other using dark and light beads trying to upset the balance of the world, but they are too evenly matched for one to prevail over the other.

Part 1 is set in the past-tense and begins with recounting a cavalry attack on an Ojibwe settlement in the 1800s in which Scranton Roy kills an old Ojibwe woman. He is immediately haunted by this action and, seeing a dog carrying a baby away from the battle, deserts to follow the child. He raises her as his own and names her Matilda. When Matilda grows up, her mother, Blue Prairie Woman, comes searching for her and Matilda decides to leave with her biological mother to reconnect with her Native American roots. However, her mother dies and Matilda is taken in by a herd of antelope.

Scranton Roy marries a woman named Peace McKnight and they have a child together named Augustus. The narrative jumps forward to when Peace has died and Scranton is still consumed by his guilt over killing the Ojibwe woman. He and Augustus set out with a cracker tin full of money in an attempt to find the woman’s family and repay his debt to her. They miraculously encounter the woman’s twin granddaughters, Mary and Zosie. They accept the money and Scranton kills himself, but instead of leaving, Augustus decides to stay because he falls in love with the twins.

Augustus has a complex relationship with Mary and Zosie because they are identical and he cannot distinguish between the two, so he ultimately takes both as his wives. Between the three of them, they have four children: Peace, Charlie, Booch, and Shawano. When the children are young, an agent tries to abduct them to take them to a Native American boarding school, but Peace fights him off and Augustus takes them home.

The three boys are obsessed with the idea of becoming warriors like their ancestors, so they enlist when World War 1 begins. The brothers survive the war, but Shawano is haunted by one of his fellow soldier’s gory death. He changes his name to Ogichidaa and resolves to take a German migrant worker as a slave to avenge his friends’ death. He kidnaps a young man named Klaus and is urged to kill him, but Klaus evades death by baking them a Blitzkuchen cake so delicious that the family takes mercy on him.

Part 2 jumps forward to modern Minneapolis and the narrative is shared between Almost Soup and Klaus, Shawano’s son. Klaus travels to a powwow in Montana and becomes infatuated with a mysterious, silent antelope woman. He abducts her, takes her back to Minneapolis, pretends that she is his wife, and names her Sweetheart Calico.

Klaus and Sweetheart Calico live with his boss Richard Whiteheart Beads, his wife, Rozin, and their twin daughters, Cally and Deanna. Klaus and Richard work together pulling up old carpet from a mall and dumping it in an abandoned barn instead of in a designated hazardous waste site. Eventually, their illegal scam catches up with Richard and he frames Klaus by sending him on a vacation with Richard’s ID card. While this situation is unfolding, Rozin falls in love with her cousin, Frank, who owns a bakery.

One day, Cally and Deanna are entrusted to Sweetheart Calico while Rozin goes to work. Sweetheart Calico leads them into the city, accompanied by her dog who the reader discovers is the narrator, Almost Soup. They get lost, and Almost Soup leads Cally and Deanna home because he has named himself as their protector. After the harrowing day and night searching for her missing daughters, Rozin resolves to take them up to the reservation to live with their grandmothers, Giizis and Noodin. While there, Cally and Deanna fall deathly ill and are taken to the hospital, where they receive treatment and survive.

Part 3 beings by recounting the story of Cally and Deanna’s birth and a mix-up between their umbilical cords. In Ojibwe culture, these cords are vital for grounding a person’s identity, and the grandmothers and Rozin worry about the girls’ safety. This worry still exists in the present day and prompts the grandmothers to give the twins their traditional Ojibwe names, but Rozin rejects this proposal. They return to Minneapolis and to Frank’s bakery, where Frank struggles with perfecting the old family recipe of the Blitzkuchen cake.

Meanwhile, Klaus and Richard are posing as homeless people in order to escape the consequences of their illegal activities. Klaus obsesses over Sweetheart Calico, who is not with him but is still in Minneapolis because she cannot return home to Montana until he releases her. Someone writes Klaus a letter which Rozin receives at the house, begging him to return Sweetheart Calico to her home before more damage is done.

In Part 4, Richard decides he cannot continue living this way and resolves to turn himself in to the authorities. Klaus is still wandering the streets, always looking for Sweetheart Calico.

Rozin finally agrees to the twins’ receiving their Ojibwe names. Giizis gives Deanna the name “Everlasting Rainbow” and explains that she is named after Deanna’s ancestor, the old Ojibwe woman who Scranton Roy killed. Noodin gives Cally the name “Blue Prairie Woman”, after Cally’s ancestor, Matilda’s mother. Noodin also explains that along with this name comes the blue beads that Blue Prairie Woman owned, and which were passed down through the generations until they landed with their current owner: Sweetheart Calico.

Sweetheart Calico returns to the bakery and Cally asks for the beads, but Sweetheart Calico says she will only give them up if Klaus releases her. Ultimately, Klaus finds Sweetheart Calico and he walks west with her. The novel ends when Klaus unties Sweetheart Calico’s bonds and she walks west to her homeland.