Love Medicine » (Revised)

Though her books are fictional, Louise Erdrich is contributing an evocation of Native American history that has been all too absent from our literature. Rambling across centuries and populating her books with quirky, intense characters, Erdrich creates bittersweet family sagas.

Louise Erdrich's foremost subject throughout her writing career has been the Native American culture -- primarily that of the Chippewa -- of the northern Midwest. Born in Minnesota in 1954, Erdrich was raised in North Dakota, where her parents taught at a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school; Erdrich later attended Dartmouth College and Johns Hopkins University. Love Medicine (1984), her first novel, was also the first novel in the Native American tetralogy that includes The Beet Queen (1986), Tracks (1988), and The Bingo Palace (1994). These four novels trace the saga of two extended families on a North Dakota Chippewa reservation, exploring the impact of intense poverty, insensitive government policies, alcoholism, and the Catholic Church on a culture that nonetheless survives. Erdrich was married to the late writer Michael Dorris, with whom she collaborated on The Crown of Columbus (1991).

Chicago Tribune

A dazzling series of family portraits. . . . This novel is simply about the power of love.