Pluto

Pluto is a small town in rural North Dakota that borders the Ojibwe Indian Reservation. Pluto is founded in the 1800s by a group of white and Indian settlers who unwittingly name the town after the Greek god of the underworld due to the prominence of Greek-named towns in the area.

Pluto, Judge Coutts notes in the novel, is a town where everything is connected by blood. The founding families, and the successive families that come to the area, all intermarry over and over again with each other, and with the local Indians. The town is small enough where this is possible, but also large enough to have its own bank, schools, shops, diners, and historical society. In 1896, a massive swarm of doves descends upon the town, portending the town’s future demise and the murders of the Locherns and the Indians scapegoated for the killing 17 years later...