THE BLUE JAY’S DANCE: A Birth Year...

THE BLUE JAY’S DANCE: A Birth Year by Louise Erdrich (HarperPerennial: $12.; 223 pp.). National Book Critics’ Circle Award-winning novelist Louise Erdrich offers her reflections on pregnancy and the birth of her three daughters in this thoughtful, often poetic meditation. She observes the changing seasons of New Hampshire and finds the changes reflected in her mind and body. As her pregnancy progresses, she comments, “I’m not me. I feel myself becoming less a person than a place, inhabited, a foreign land.” Her loving and intelligent tribute to the pleasures of family life recalls traditional values that transcend current political rhetoric.