In 1911, near Pluto, North Dakota, on the edge of a big Indian reservation, four Indians come across the bodies of a murdered farm family. They quickly become suspects. There’s a lynching.

And from that deadly beginning, novelist Louise Erdrich unfolds her latest big book, “The Plague of Doves.”

Erdrich has planted her flag as one of the country’s most prominent Native American authors. But her stories embrace the whole nation, in all its colors and cultures and braided history.

This hour, On Point: Louise Erdrich and “The Plague of Doves.”

Guest:

Louise Erdrich, author of more than 10 novels and owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore in Minnesota. Her new novel is “The Plague of Doves.”