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Original Title:	Love Medicine
ISBN:	0060786469 (ISBN13: 9780060786465)
Edition Language:	English
Series:	Love Medicine
Setting:	North Dakota(United States)
Literary Awards:	American Book Award (1985), Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction (1985), Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction (1985), Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award for Fiction (1985), National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction (1984)

Love Medicine (Love Medicine) Paperback | Pages: 367 pages

Commentary Conducive To Books Love Medicine (Love Medicine)

A member of the Chippewa and Obijwe tribes, Louise Erdrich has been a leading voice in Native American literature for over thirty years. Determined to publish her first book before she turned thirty, Erdrich wrote Love Medicine at the age of twenty nine, and this debut novel won the National Critics Circle Book Award. Following the intricate web woven by the Kapshaw and Nanapush families over the course of fifty years, Erdrich creates real characters that tug on the heartstrings of human emotions.

Albertine Johnson has returned to the reservation for the funeral of her Aunt June Morrissey. In this opening chapter we meet her grandparents Nector and Marie Kapshaw and their descendants. Alcoholism is a persistent problem amongst the men, and there is little that the women of the tribe can do to prevent it. We see this especially from Albertine's cousin King Kapshaw who drinks rampantly because he feels that because he married an outsider, that he can get away with drinking. Because of the drinking issues, there have been illicit extra marital affairs, creating a reservation where most people are loosely related to one another.

This web of relationships can be traced to Nector Kapshaw who loved two women over his entire life: his wife Marie Kapshaw nee Lazarre and vixen Lulu Lamartine. Between the two women he fathered eight children, six surviving. The Kapshaw and Lamartine blood continued to intermix, creating an environment where strong Indian blood flowed through all the characters veins. Even though drinking and affairs are prevalent on Indian reservations, the women do not condone the behavior. Marie and Lulu remained rivals for Nestor's behavior for his entire life and there was little love for each other even though they moved in the same circles.

Erdrich does a masterful job of painting a picture of Native American traditions and beliefs. She briefly touches on the northern lights celebration, her people's lack of trust of white Americans and their forming a tribal council to voice their concern for their rights, and role alcoholism plays amongst natives on reservations who have little else to do with their time. Written in vignette form, Erdrich gives a voice to many characters in three generations of Nanapush/Lamartine and Kapshaw members of the Chippewa tribe. Each character is unique even though they share many of the same genetics and environment. As a result many issues repeat themselves over the course of the fifty years related in the novel.

Since the first publication of Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich has gone to write many novels, all focusing on Native American issues. The characters in this first novel can be found in four other of her novels, as Erdrich paints a more vivid picture of their backstories. As she became more successful, Erdrich founded Birchbark Books, with all of the proceeds returning to native Americans. Love Medicine started her career and I enjoyed the imagery and powerful characterizations in this debut novel, which I rate 4.5 bright stars.

List About Books Love Medicine (Love Medicine)

Title	:	Love Medicine (Love Medicine)
Author	:	Louise Erdrich
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Anniversary Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 367 pages
Published	:	August 2nd 2005 by Harper Perennial Modern Classics (first published 1984)
Categories	:	Fiction. Historical. Historical Fiction. Short Stories. Novels

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Ratings: 3.99 From 20826 Users | 1438 Reviews

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So many things in the world have happened before. But it's like they never did. Every new thing that happens to a person, it's a first... In that night I felt expansion, as if the world was branching out in shoots and growing faster than the eye could see. I felt smallness, how the earthy divided into bits and kept dividing. I felt the stars. I felt them roosting on my shoulders with his hand. The moon came up red and warm.I first read this book in a Native American lit college course in 2000

A remarkable report from Chippewa country. I finally get Erdrich in a way that The Round House, with all of its successes, failed to grab me. I have read from many Erdrich fans how she's an author whose books they read over and over; I am not a big re-reader, even of my favorite booksI re-read passages and lines, and a cherished favorite once in a blue moon, but there's so little time and too many booksbut while reading this, I understood her fans' (and I can now count myself as one of them)

To write a novel, start with a good short story. Then, write another. Then, another. Recycle your characters, put them all together, and you have a novel. Yes, I'm being glib. Actually, I'm a big fan of Louise Erdrich's work. She transitioned from poetry to short stories into novels, and while the transition was not seamless, it was, and still is, a journey and a growth the reader can experience with her. Her early novels do read like short story collections with the imagistic intesity of

Erdrich's first and still best-known work (because it's the one most often taught) has become something of a model for the contemporary short-story cycle, with interconnected stories devoted to a variety of interrelated characters spanning three (almost four) generations. The strength here is less in story (which centers on a love triangle and its effect on family ties) or character (vivid as they may be, they're still devoted women and unreliable men) than in style. I wouldn't call it lyrical

Love Medicine is a novel set in and around an Ojibwe reservation in South Dakota. It consists of a number of vignettes and stories about various members of two families on the reservation, the Kashpaws and the Nanapush/Lamartines, whose lives are interwoven in various ways. It is remarkably well written, particularly considering that this was Erdrich's first novel. She writes a number of different characters, with very distinct voices, each sounding distinct and authentic. And the writing is

What a fantastic debut novel! It has linking stories from different Ojibwe people in different generations, but not only do they tell a shared story, they interlink with the books we already read - Tracks and Four Souls - even though those books were written later. I did read the 1993 revised edition. One element I loved was the portrayal of people in love even in old age. Here is a quotation that speaks to that: I thought love got easier over the years so it didnt hurt so bad when it hurt, or

Her clothes were filled with safety pins and hidden tearsLast week I sat on the steps of a downtown pier, stalled in the summer sun, reading my 1989 paperback edition of Love Medicine. With its Washington Husky-purple cover and title blaring in giant Brittanic Bold white font, the book must have appeared to the uninitiated like a pulp romance. Little did they know it was one of the most significant works of American fiction published in the 1980s, by an author who has become a national literary