Love Medicine
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Overview
The first book in Louise Erdrich's Native American series, which also includes The Beet Queen, Tracks, and The Bingo Palace, Love Medicine tells the story of two families—the Kashpaws and the Lamartines. Now resequenced by the author with the addition of never-before-published chapters, this is a publishing event equivalent to the presentation of a new and definitive text. Written in Erdrich's uniquely poetic, powerful style, Love Medicine springs to raging life: a multigenerational portrait of new truths and secrets whose time has come, of strong men and women caught in an unforgettable drama of anger, desire, and the healing power that is Love Medicine. Discover the writer whom Philp Roth called "the most interesting new American novelist to have appeared in years" all over again.Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, a moving saga of two Native American families.
Synopsis
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.