Return of the (non-)native: Coming home in Louise Erdrich's the last report on the miracles at little no horse

In his exploration of the postsecular novel, Partial Faiths, John McClure argues that the characters in contemporary Native American fiction, who are usually "ontologically and culturally unhoused", typically undergo a difficult and dangerous return to their culture, tradition, and religion. McClure examines two novels from Louise Erdrich's expansive corpus of fiction and concludes that her work does not include such characters; instead, he argues, "her works project a comedic vision of partial and impure returning". This essay will illustrate how adding just one more novel to the analysis - The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse - necessitates a reconsideration, even revision, of the position of Erdrich's fiction within McClure's definition of postsecular literature. For by thematizing Catholic and Native American beliefs and practices, Last Report manages to confirm aspects of the postmodern condition whilst defying the understanding of postsecular faith as an impartial return to a weakened form of belief or tradition. In addition, by exploring the entangled, often fraught, relationship between Ojibwe animism and Catholicism, Erdrich exposes the key, enduring, and ultimately shared tenets of these two belief systems.