Summary

Louise Erdrich opens the book with a folktale about twin sisters who sew the world into existence. One twin uses dark beads, the other light, and they compete against each other as they sew, “each trying to upset the balance of the world” (8).

Chapter 1 begins with a third-person omniscient narrator retelling the story of a cavalry attack on a Native American settlement, focusing on a soldier named Scranton Roy. Scranton initially relished in the killing but upon stabbing an old Ojibwe woman, “she cried a word that would reverberate in his mind until the last moment of his life” (10). He was driven by remorse to save a baby with a string of blue beads who was carried away from the battle on the back of a dog. Scranton had no way to feed the child and out of desperation he “opened his...