Trevor Burrows#ReadingNotes thread for 2026!
Going to try my best to corral my reading notes in this thread this year, making it easier to mute/filter (if you desire).
So first sentences, running commentary, etc. will be posted as responses to this thread.
"We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall. It was surprising there were so many of us left to die."
-- #FirstSentences of Louise Erdrich, *Tracks*
(Started 6/2. Notes will go here.)
So *Tracks* is all about Fleur Pillager.
I don't remember Fleur making an appearance in *The Beet Queen*, which didn't have as strong a connection to the Nanapush/Kashpaw storylines of the Love Medicine world.
But in the second chapter, Erdrich connects Fleur indirectly to the butcher shop that is a big part of The Beet Queen's setting.
Which has me remembering that, while reading *Love Medicine*, I tried to start keeping notes on the world Erdrich created towards some sort of timeline, but I didn't have a great system.
This is why I wanted those notes: I am trying to remember what we learned about Fleur in the first book and if there was any mention of her in the second...
In any case, *Tracks* starts in Nanapush's voice, and he's just such a great character.
Here, he's talking to Father Damien after being stranded with young Fleur for a while, waiting out winter and an epidemic with little sustenance:
"My voice rasped at first when I tried to speak, but then, oiled by strong tea, lard and bread, I was off and talking. Even a sledge won't stop me once I start. Father Damien looked astonished, and then wary, as I began to creak and roll. I gathered speed. I talked both languages in streams that ran alongside each other, over every rock, around every obstacle. The sound of my own voice convinced me I was alive. [...] Occasionally, he took in air, as if to add observations of his own, but I pushed him under with my words."
That casual extension of the metaphor: "I talked both languages in streams..." to "Occasionally, he took in air... but I pushed him under with my words" is kind of genius. Made me do a double-take.