Love Medicine - by Louise Erdrich (Paperback)

About the Book

The first book in Erdrich's Native American tetralogy that includes The Beet Queen, Tracks, and The Bingo Palace is an authentic and emotionally powerful glimpse into the Native American experience--now resequenced and expanded to include never-before-published chapters.

Book Synopsis

"The beauty of Love Medicine saves us from being completely devastated by its power." -- Toni Morrison

Set on a North Dakota Ojibwe reservation, Love Medicine--the first novel from master storyteller and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich--is an epic story about the intertwined fates of two families: the Kashpaws and the Lamartines.

With astonishing virtuosity, each chapter of this stunning novel draws on a range of voices to limn its tales. Black humor mingles with magic, injustice bleeds into betrayal, and through it all, bonds of love and family marry the elements into a tightly woven whole that pulses with the drama of life.

Erdrich has written a multigenerational portrait of strong men and women caught in an unforgettable whirlwind of anger, desire, and the healing power that is love medicine.

From the Back Cover

The stunning first novel in Louise Erdrich's Native American series, Love Medicine tells the story of two families, the Kashpaws and the Lamartines. Written in Erdrich's uniquely poetic, powerful style, it is a multigenerational portrait of strong men and women caught in an unforgettable drama of anger, desire, and the healing power that is love medicine.

Review Quotes

"We know we are in the hands of an exceptionally skilled, sensitive, observant writer ... Love Medicine is the work of a tough, loving mind." -- Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post

"The beauty of Love Medicine saves us from being completely devastated by its power." -- Toni Morrison

"A masterpiece, written with spellbinding authenticity." -- Philip Roth

"Lyrical and funny, mystical and down-to-earth, Love Medicine entrances" -- Christian Science Monitor

"A powerful piece of work . . . Louise Erdrich is the rarest kind of writer; as compassionate as she is sharp-sighted" -- Anne Tyler

"A wondrous prose song . . . about the enduring verities of love and surviving, and these truths are revealed in a narrative that is an invigorating mixture of the cosmic and the tragic." -- New York Times Book Review

"A remarkable first novel that stares more boldly at many of the truths of Native American life in the country than any fiction I've read.... It is a deeply, if ironically, spirited novel." -- Chicago Sun-Times