Fleur

“Fleur” is a magical realist short story by Chippewa American author Louise Erdrich. It was first published in Esquire in 1986 and won an O. Henry Award, a prize for excellence in short story writing. Erdrich expanded on the story and characters in her novel Tracks, published in 1988. This guide, which discusses sexual abuse, uses the version of “Fleur” published in the 2009 collection The Red Convertible: Selected and New Stories 1978-2008.

The narrator, Pauline, describes how Fleur drowned twice in Lake Turcot—stories Pauline first heard from her Chippewa grandmother. The first time, Fleur is a young girl and is saved by two men, both of whom suffer terrible fates. The first man wanders off, and the second, Jean Hat, is run over by a cart and killed. Years later, a twenty-year-old Fleur drowns again, but the men are too scared to save her, fearing that they will meet similar fates. George Many Women finds her washed ashore, alive but her skin gray, and Fleur hisses at him that he will take her place. After this encounter, Many Women will not go near water. Eventually, Many Women drowns in a bathtub after he slips and is knocked unconscious.