Bookended by World War I, which Fidelis and Cyprian fought in, and World War II, which Fidelis' children fight in, the title contains several overarching themes including family, tradition, loss, betrayal, and memory, to name a few.

The novel has been developed into a stage play by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Marsha Norman, and premiered as part of the Guthrie Theater's 2010/11 season in September 2010 under the direction of Francesca Zambello.

[3] The novel begins at the end of World War I with Fidelis Waldvogel, a German sniper, returning to his hometown in defeated Germany from the battle lines.

She agrees, and soon the two are wed. Fidelis, a butcher by trade, leaves Germany by himself to emigrate to the United States in order to escape the immense poverty brought on by the war.

He plans to travel to Seattle to set up a new life for his family, paying his way by selling German sausages.

There is an overpowering stench in Roy's house, and in the process of cleaning the dwelling, Delphine and Cyprian discover the corpses of three people – two adults and one child – rotting in her father's cellar.

While attempting to unravel the mystery of the bodies in the cellar, as well as to eradicate the odor from the house, Delphine meets Eva.

Eva's sister-in-law Tante ("aunt" in German) Maria Theresa arrives to assist the family with the various means of daily life.

He is transferred to a POW camp in the U.S. After Markus finds this out, he takes Fidelis there but Erich refuses to speak to either of them.

Franz as well, on the American side, is gravely injured in an airplane accident, which eventually results in his death.

The novel concludes with the revelation of Delphine's true heritage, as told by the town scrap collector, Step-and-a-Half.

Fidelis' butchering profession suggests a potential for brutality, but he also has a beautiful voice that he uses to unite the men of the town in the singing club.

Cyprian feels sexually drawn to men but attempts to live a heterosexual life with Delphine; he must constantly balance these two opposing aspects of his personality.

However, he was a raging alcoholic that forced her to be self-sustaining from a young age, and she suspects throughout the novel that he may be guilty of murdering the Chavers family.

Erdrich uses some of her personal family history and background as source for The Master Butcher's Singing Club.

After a failed German Revolution in 1848, there was the greatest wave of political asylum seekers who left Germany.

By the end of the 19th century, most immigrants were unmarried industrial workers, who came to the United States seeking seasonal work but never returned to Germany.

His influence was felt across the sea in the United States by way of a divided feeling of German-Americans on the stand of an imperialist Germany.

The 1830s through the 1870s saw a massive immigration of Germans to the U.S. resulting in an important ethnic German-born block of American society.

The immigration explosion of youthful Germans resulted in a pro-imperialist view of Germany to the American public by way of the German-American press.

1901 saw the formation of the German-American alliance, a pressure group used to enforce propaganda geared to an imperial Germany upon politicians.

To this day, there remain untold accounts of German-American internment camps during World War II.

[citation needed] "Not since Richard Russo's 2001 novel, Empire Falls, which won the Pulitzer Prize, have I enjoyed the company of such memorable characters."

[4] "Explored, exposed and cherished if not by each other than at least, unmistakably, by their author, these creatures wrench their vanished time and place into the modern mind with such force as to displace everything else -- not only during the hours and days spent reading about them, but in their interstices and the aftermath as well."

[5] "The Master Butchers Singing Club is an ambitious novel, covering 36 years and several points of view.

Too ambitious perhaps, because Erdrich can't keep up with her own agenda: she has created an array of colorful people but not one credible character, except possibly for the troubled, appealing Cyprian.

[6] "It is a measure of Ms. Erdrich's poise as a writer, her understanding of her characters' inclinations and dreams that she is able to make such developments feel not like the contrivances of a novelist playing God but like the inevitable workings of a random but oddly symmetrical fate."

"German Heritage and Culture in Louise Erdrich's The Master Butchers Singing Club," Great Plains Quarterly.