Review of Love Medicine (Paperback)

Published in 1984, this stunning collection of interrelated short stories won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction.Focusing on the lives of several Chippewa Indian families, and the white families with whom they interact and/or marry, author Louise Erdrich depicts their traditional culture through some of the early characters, and, through later characters, the way the old ways change or become compromised through education, the introduction of religion by missionaries, and contact with modern society.The stories are set in North Dakota on or near a remote reservation, not far from the Canadian border, similar to the place where Erdrich grew up and where her parents worked as teachers for the Bureau of Indian Affairs

The stories reveal fifty years in the lives of the Kashpaw and Lamartine families from the 1930s to the 1980s, as they interact, intermarry, and ultimately try to figure out who they have become.Through her selection of details and her often lyrical descriptions, Erdrich creates vibrant local settings within which her characters tell their stories in lively, colloquial voices. Emotional, matter-of-fact, tormented, and sometimes angry, the characters are equally well drawn for both men and women.

The separate stories of Marie and Nector Kashpaw, which come together when they marry, occupy much of the very early years covered by the collection, but their stories also involve Lulu Lamartine, with whom Nector has a long affair.In the 1980s, Marie and Nector's grandson, Lipsha Morrissey, tries to create a "love medicine" for his elderly grandparents in an old age home, a story filled with ironies and, ultimately, dark humor. Between these stories time flashes forward and back as other generations, other children and parents from the same families, try to deal with the immediate aftermath of war, the harshness of the prison system, unemployment, and poverty.

As the characters overlap and interact throughout the stories,the author conveys Chippewa culture, the families' resistance to and acceptance of change, the roles of strong women in holding families together, the hostility towards the federal government, and the sometimes overwhelming despair of those who live on the reservation.The characters' sense of pride and endurance elevate even the saddest and most wrenching stories, however, while the bleak humor keeps them from becoming morbid or sentimental.Dramatic, thoughtful, and powerful, Erdrich's collection creates an unforgettable portrait of two families who represent a changing Chippewa nation.Mary Whipple




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