It was written after The Master Butcher’s Singing Club (2003) and before The Painted Drum (2005); however, the events of Four Souls take place after Tracks (1988).

[1] Four Souls follows Fleur Pillager, an Ojibwe woman, in her quest for revenge against the white man who stole her ancestral land.

Fleur appears in many books in the series, and this novel takes place directly after her departure from the Little No Horse reservation at the end of Tracks.

[1] Woven throughout Four Souls, and many of the novels concerning Erdrich's fictional reservation and its inhabitants, is the thread of an intricate narrative that affects events and characters across the series.

As in history, the Ojibwe people within her novels face the appropriation of land by the government, removal, and the allotment process meant to encourage farming and eventual assimilation which were a result of western expansion.

[1] Many consider this book to be written in a post-modernist style and suggest Erdrich's works may have been influenced by modernist William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County stories due to the highly interconnected relationships and characters within her novels.

Mauser has divorced Placide and made Fleur the new lady of the house, removing Polly from her seat of power and influence.

[5] When the child, a boy, is born, he is restless and can only be calmed by a drop of whiskey, much like his mother who is also now dependent on the “golden fire” to function.

She makes a teasing joke at Nanapush's expense, causing him to leave in outrage and steal wine from the church cellar.

Fleur wins the game, and with it her land, as it had been bought by the bar owner after Mauser failed to pay the property taxes.

Margaret then begins the long process of healing Fleur's broken spirit and finding her a new name, as “Four Souls” is no longer the proper name for her.

[6] By focusing her storytelling through Native narrators, Erdrich creates a “communal Indian voice [that] relates the story of the Plains Ojibwa people.” To Connie A. Jacobs, Erdrich is recounting Native history in the most Indigenous way possible where “stories stand as metaphors… for the major episodes of tribal life.”[8] Michiko Kakutani, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, wrote an article in The New York Times where she describes the overall storyline of Four Souls as “predictable and trite.”[9] In her review for The New York Times, Karen Fowler writes that “the progression of events feels natural and unforced, full of satisfying yet unexpected twists.”[10] In a review for Publishers Weekly, Andrew Wylie notes Four Souls as a work of “unusual commercial interest.” Wylie concludes his review by considering how the tale seems like an “insiders experience,” which leads to his point that “Erdrich may not ensnare many new readers, but she will already satisfy her already significant audience.”[11] In the 2003 issue of The New Yorker, altered sections of the novel's ninth and eleventh chapters appear under the title “Love Snares.”[12] Subsequently, in 2004, HarperCollins published the novel and Louise Erdrich copyrighted Four Souls to her name.