Most Popular Books by Louise Erdrich

"Dazzling. . . . A hard-won love letter to readers and to booksellers, as well as a compelling story about how we cope with pain and fear, injustice and illness. One good way is to press a beloved book into another''s hands. Read The Sentence and then do just that."—USA Today, Four Stars In this New York Times bestselling novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning author Louise Erdrich creates a wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage, and of a woman''s relentless errors. Louise Erdrich''s latest novel, The Sentence, asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store''s most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls'' Day, but she simply won''t leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading "with murderous attention," must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning. The Sentence begins on All Souls'' Day 2019 and ends on All Souls'' Day 2020. Its mystery and proliferating ghost stories during this one year propel a narrative as rich, emotional, and profound as anything Louise Erdrich has written.

The first of Louise Erdrich’s polysymphonic novels set in North Dakota – a fictional landscape that, in Erdrich’s hands, has become iconic – Love Medicine is the story of three generations of Ojibwe families. Set against the tumultuous politics of the reservation,the lives of the Kashpaws and the Lamartines are a testament to the endurance of a people and the sorrows of history.

Louise Erdrich''s mesmerizing new novel, her first in almost three years, centers on a compelling mystery. The unsolved murder of a farm family haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The vengeance exacted for this crime and the subsequent distortions of truth transform the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation and shape the passions of both communities for the next generation. The descendants of Ojibwe and white intermarry, their lives intertwine; only the youngest generation, of mixed blood, remains unaware of the role the past continues to play in their lives. Evelina Harp is a witty, ambitious young girl, part Ojibwe, part white, who is prone to falling hopelessly in love. Mooshum, Evelina''s grandfather, is a seductive storyteller, a repository of family and tribal history with an all-too-intimate knowledge of the violent past. Nobody understands the weight of historical injustice better than Judge Antone Bazil Coutts, a thoughtful mixed blood who witnesses the lives of those who appear before him, and whose own love life reflects the entire history of the territory. In distinct and winning voices, Erdrich''s narrators unravel the stories of different generations and families in this corner of North Dakota. Bound by love, torn by history, the two communities'' collective stories finally come together in a wrenching truth revealed in the novel''s final pages. The Plague of Doves is one of the major achievements of Louise Erdrich''s considerable oeuvre, a quintessentially American story and the most complex and original of her books.

WINNER OF THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WASHINGTON POST, NPR, CBS SUNDAY MORNING, KIRKUS, CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY, AND GOOD HOUSEKEEPING BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich’s grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman. Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a Chippewa Council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new “emancipation” bill on its way to the floor of the United States Congress. It is 1953 and he and the other council members know the bill isn’t about freedom; Congress is fed up with Indians. The bill is a “termination” that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity. How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native Americans “for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run”? Since graduating high school, Pixie Paranteau has insisted that everyone call her Patrice. Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Patrice, the class valedictorian, has no desire to wear herself down with a husband and kids. She makes jewel bearings at the plant, a job that barely pays her enough to support her mother and brother. Patrice’s shameful alcoholic father returns home sporadically to terrorize his wife and children and bully her for money. But Patrice needs every penny to follow her beloved older sister, Vera, who moved to the big city of Minneapolis. Vera may have disappeared; she hasn’t been in touch in months, and is rumored to have had a baby. Determined to find Vera and her child, Patrice makes a fateful trip to Minnesota that introduces her to unexpected forms of exploitation and violence, and endangers her life. Thomas and Patrice live in this impoverished reservation community along with young Chippewa boxer Wood Mountain and his mother Juggie Blue, her niece and Patrice’s best friend Valentine, and Stack Barnes, the white high school math teacher and boxing coach who is hopelessly in love with Patrice. In the Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich creates a fictional world populated with memorable characters who are forced to grapple with the worst and best impulses of human nature. Illuminating the loves and lives, the desires and ambitions of these characters with compassion, wit, and intelligence, The Night Watchman is a majestic work of fiction from this revered cultural treasure.

A novelist writes of her experiences during a 12 month period through pregnancy, new motherhood, and return to writing.

Her name is Omakayas, or Little Frog, because her first step was a hop, and she lives on an island in Lake Superior. One day in 1850, Omakayas′s island is visited by a group of mysterious people. From them, she learns that the chimookomanag, or white people, want Omakayas and her people to leave their island and move farther west. That day, Omakayas realizes that something so valuable, so important that she never knew she had it in the first place, could be in danger: Her way of life. Her home.

Being of mixed blood and having lived in both white and Indian worlds, they give an original perspective on American society. Sometimes with humor and always with refreshing candor, their discussions undermine the damaging stereotypes of American Indians. Some of the interviews focus on their nonfiction book The Broken Cord, which recounts the struggle to solve their adopted son''s health problems from fetal alcohol syndrome. Included also are two recent interviews published here for the first time.

In this award-winning sequel to Chickadee, acclaimed author Louise Erdrich continues her celebrated Birchbark House series with the story of an Ojibwe family in nineteenth-century America. Named for the Ojibwe word for little bear, Makoons and his twin, Chickadee, have traveled with their family to the Great Plains of Dakota Territory. There they must learn to become buffalo hunters and once again help their people make a home in a new land. But Makoons has had a vision that foretells great challenges—challenges that his family may not be able to overcome. Based on Louise Erdrich’s own family history, this fifth book in the series features black-and-white interior illustrations, a note from the author about her research, and a map and glossary of Ojibwe terms.

Winner of the National Book Award • Washington Post Best Book of the Year • A New York Times Notable Book From one of the most revered novelists of our time, an exquisitely told story of a boy on the cusp of manhood who seeks justice and understanding in the wake of a terrible crime that upends and forever transforms his family. One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface because Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and thirteen-year-old son, Joe. In one day, Joe''s life is irrevocably transformed. He tries to heal his mother, but she will not leave her bed and slips into an abyss of solitude. Increasingly alone, Joe finds himself thrust prematurely into an adult world for which he is ill prepared. While his father, a tribal judge, endeavors to wrest justice from a situation that defies his efforts, Joe becomes frustrated with the official investigation and sets out with his trusted friends, Cappy, Zack, and Angus, to get some answers of his own. Their quest takes them first to the Round House, a sacred space and place of worship for the Ojibwe. And this is only the beginning. The Round House is a page-turning masterpiece—at once a powerful coming-of-age story, a mystery, and a tender, moving novel of family, history, and culture.

A New York Times Notable Book Louise Erdrich, the New York Times bestselling, National Book Award-winning author of LaRose and The Round House, paints a startling portrait of a young woman fighting for her life and her unborn child against oppressive forces that manifest in the wake of a cataclysmic event. The world as we know it is ending. Evolution has reversed itself, affecting every living creature on earth. Science cannot stop the world from running backwards, as woman after woman gives birth to infants that appear to be primitive species of humans. Twenty-six-year-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker, adopted daughter of a pair of big-hearted, open-minded Minneapolis liberals, is as disturbed and uncertain as the rest of America around her. But for Cedar, this change is profound and deeply personal. She is four months pregnant. Though she wants to tell the adoptive parents who raised her from infancy, Cedar first feels compelled to find her birth mother, Mary Potts, an Ojibwe living on the reservation, to understand both her and her baby’s origins. As Cedar goes back to her own biological beginnings, society around her begins to disintegrate, fueled by a swelling panic about the end of humanity. There are rumors of martial law, of Congress confining pregnant women. Of a registry, and rewards for those who turn these wanted women in. Flickering through the chaos are signs of increasing repression: a shaken Cedar witnesses a family wrenched apart when police violently drag a mother from her husband and child in a parking lot. The streets of her neighborhood have been renamed with Bible verses. A stranger answers the phone when she calls her adoptive parents, who have vanished without a trace. It will take all Cedar has to avoid the prying eyes of potential informants and keep her baby safe. A chilling dystopian novel both provocative and prescient, Future Home of the Living God is a startlingly original work from one of our most acclaimed writers: a moving meditation on female agency, self-determination, biology, and natural rights that speaks to the troubling changes of our time.

Set in North Dakota at a time in this century when Indian tribes were struggling to keep what little remained of their lands, Tracks is a tale of passion and deep unrest. Over the course of ten crucial years, as tribal land and trust between people erode ceaselessly, men and women are pushed to the brink of their endurance--yet their pride and humor prohibit surrender. The reader will experience shock and pleasure in encountering a group of characters that are compelling and rich in their vigor, clarity, and indomitable vitality.

In her boldest and most darkly humorous novel yet, award-winning, critically acclaimed and bestselling novelist Louise Erdrich tells the intimate and powerful stories of five Great Plains women whose lives are connected through one man. Stranded in a North Dakota blizzard, Jack Mauser''s former wives huddle for warmth and pass the endless night by remembering the stories of how each came to love, marry and ultimately move beyond Jack. At times painful, at times heartbreaking and often times comic, their tales become the adhesive that holds them together in their love for Jack and in their lives as women. Erdrich, with her characteristic powers of observation and luminescent prose, brings these women''s unforgettable stories to life with astonishing candor and warmth. Filled with keen perceptions about the apparatus for survival, the force of passion and the necessity of hope, Tales of Burning Love is a tour de force from one of the most formidable American writers at work today.

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction Finalist for the PEN Faulkner Award In this literary masterwork, Louise Erdrich, bestselling author of the National Book Award-winning The Round House and the Pulitzer Prize nominee The Plague of Doves, wields her breathtaking narrative magic in an emotionally haunting contemporary tale of a tragic accident, a demand for justice, and a profound act of atonement with ancient roots in Native American culture. North Dakota, late summer, 1999. Landreaux Iron stalks a deer along the edge of the property bordering his own. He shoots with easy confidence—but when the buck springs away, Landreaux realizes he’s hit something else, a blur he saw as he squeezed the trigger. When he staggers closer, he realizes he has killed his neighbor’s five-year-old son, Dusty Ravich. The youngest child of his friend and neighbor, Peter Ravich, Dusty was best friends with Landreaux’s five-year-old son, LaRose. The two families have always been close, sharing food, clothing, and rides into town; their children played together despite going to different schools; and Landreaux’s wife, Emmaline, is half sister to Dusty’s mother, Nola. Horrified at what he’s done, the recovered alcoholic turns to an Ojibwe tribe tradition—the sweat lodge—for guidance, and finds a way forward. Following an ancient means of retribution, he and Emmaline will give LaRose to the grieving Peter and Nola. “Our son will be your son now,” they tell them. LaRose is quickly absorbed into his new family. Plagued by thoughts of suicide, Nola dotes on him, keeping her darkness at bay. His fierce, rebellious new “sister,” Maggie, welcomes him as a coconspirator who can ease her volatile mother’s terrifying moods. Gradually he’s allowed shared visits with his birth family, whose sorrow mirrors the Raviches’ own. As the years pass, LaRose becomes the linchpin linking the Irons and the Raviches, and eventually their mutual pain begins to heal. But when a vengeful man with a long-standing grudge against Landreaux begins raising trouble, hurling accusations of a cover-up the day Dusty died, he threatens the tenuous peace that has kept these two fragile families whole. Inspiring and affecting, LaRose is a powerful exploration of loss, justice, and the reparation of the human heart, and an unforgettable, dazzling tour de force from one of America’s most distinguished literary masters.

A New York Times Notable Book “Stunning. . . a moving meditation. . . infused with mystery and wonder.” —Atlanta Journal-Constitution In a masterwork that both deepens and enlarges the world of her previous novels, acclaimed author Louise Erdrich captures the essence of a time and the spirit of a woman who felt compelled by her beliefs to serve her people as a priest. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse deals with miracles, crises of faith, struggles with good and evil, temptation, and the corrosive and redemptive power of secrecy. For more than a half century, Father Damien Modeste has served his beloved Native American tribe, the Ojibwe, on the remote reservation of Little No Horse. Now, nearing the end of his life, Father Damien dreads the discovery of his physical identity, for he is a woman who has lived as a man. To further complicate his quiet existence, a troubled colleague comes to the reservation to investigate the life of the perplexing, possibly false saint Sister Leopolda. Father Damien alone knows the strange truth of Leopolda''s piety, but these facts are bound up in his own secret. He is faced with the most difficult decision: Should he tell all and risk everything . . . or manufacture a protective history for Leopolda, though he believes her wonder-working is motivated solely by evil? The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse is a work of an avid heart, a writer''s writer, and a storytelling genius.

A powerful new novel of from one of America''s most important and entertaining writers In 1918, Fidelis walks home from the Great War to a Germany broken and defeated. He finds himself inexplicably drawn to the fiancee of his dead best friend and they marry but, knowing he cannot make his fortune here, Fidelis heads for America. When he leaves, ''The inside pockets of his father''s suit held all he needed.'' He leaves behind his family of master butchers, but not the skills he has learned from them and in America his sausages gradually become legendary... Moving to small-town America, he is soon joined by his wife and son, opens a deli and life seems to be perfect. But there are always the locals to contend with and when they meet Delphine and Cyprian, two eccentric travelling circus performers, things begin to get interesting. There is the problem of the unresolved dead bodies discovered rotting in the basement of Delphine''s father''s house, for one. And then there is the rivalry over the local singing groups -- will Fidelis be able to prove his superiority? Spanning two continents, this epic look at post-war immigrants'' America is Louise Erdrich at her engrossing best. Warm, human, fu

Back on his reservation, Lipsha Morrissey, the illegitimate son of June Kashpaw and Gerry Nanapush, falls in love with Shawnee Ray and is torn between success and meaning, love and money, and the future and the past.

Three decades of short fiction by one of the most innovative and exciting writers of our day In Louise Erdrich''s fictional world, the mystical can emerge from the everyday, the comic can turn suddenly tragic, and violence and splendor inhabit a single emotional landscape. The fantastic twists and leaps of her imagination are made all the more meaningful by the deeper truth of human feeling that underlies them. These thirty-six short works selected by the author herself—including five previously unpublished stories—are ordered chronologically as well as by theme and voice, each tale spellbinding in its boldness and beauty. The Red Convertible is a stunning literary achievement, the collected brilliance of a fearless and inventive writer.

Here follows the story of a most extraordinary year in the life of an Ojibwe family and of a girl named "Omakayas," or Little Frog, who lived a year of flight and adventure, pain and joy, in 1852. When Omakayas is twelve winters old, she and her family set off on a harrowing journey. They travel by canoe westward from the shores of Lake Superior along the rivers of northern Minnesota, in search of a new home. While the family has prepared well, unexpected danger, enemies, and hardships will push them to the brink of survival. Omakayas continues to learn from the land and the spirits around her, and she discovers that no matter where she is, or how she is living, she has the one thing she needs to carry her through. Richly imagined, full of laughter and sorrow, The Porcupine Year continues Louise Erdrich''s celebrated series, which began with The Birchbark House, a National Book Award finalist, and continued with The Game of Silence, winner of the Scott O''Dell Award for Historical Fiction.

“Haunted and haunting. . . . With fearlessness and humility, in a narrative that flows more artfully than ever between destruction and rebirth, Erdrich has opened herself to possibilities beyond what we merely see—to the dead alive and busy, to the breath of trees and the souls of wolves—and inspires readers to open their hearts to these mysteries as well.”— Washington Post Book World From the author of the National Book Award Winner The Round House, Louise Erdrich''s breathtaking, lyrical novel of a priceless Ojibwe artifact and the effect it has had on those who have come into contact with it over the years. While appraising the estate of a New Hampshire family descended from a North Dakota Indian agent, Faye Travers is startled to discover a rare moose skin and cedar drum fashioned long ago by an Ojibwe artisan. And so begins an illuminating journey both backward and forward in time, following the strange passage of a powerful yet delicate instrument, and revealing the extraordinary lives it has touched and defined. Compelling and unforgettable, Louise Erdrich''s Painted Drum explores the often-fraught relationship between mothers and daughters, the strength of family, and the intricate rhythms of grief with all the grace, wit, and startling beauty that characterizes this acclaimed author''s finest work.

Award-winning novelist Erdrich brilliantly weaves ancient Ojibwe rock paintings, personal insights on Ojibwe culture, and keen observations about her family into a lyrical and entertaining memoir.

Now, from the award-winning author of Love Medicine, comes a vibrant tale of abandonment and sexual obsession, jealousy and unstinting love. On a spring morning in 1932, young Karl and Mary Adare arrive by boxcar in Argus, North Dakota. Orphaned in a most peculiar way, Karl and Mary look for refuge to their mother''s sister Fritzie, who with her husband, Pete, runs a butcher shop. So begins an exhilerating 40-year saga brimming with unforgettable characters: Ordinary Mary, who causes a miracle ; seductive Karl, who lacks Mary''s gift for survival; Sita, their lovely, disturbed, ambitious cousin; Wallace Pfef, a town leader bearing a lonely secret; Celestine James, a mixed-blood Chippewa; and her daughter, Dot. Theirs is a story grounded in the tenacity of relationships, the magic of natural events and the unending mystery of the human condition.

Continuing the series that began with The Birchbark House, The Game of Silence and The Porcupine Year, Chickadee follows a brand new character, Omakayas''s grandson Chickadee. It''s 1866 and just like the bird that is his namesake, Chickadee is small and clever. When Chickadee''s twin brother pranks Shigaag, the tribe''s ne''er-do-well, Shigaag''s unruly, bumbling sons kidnap Chickadee as revenge. He''s taken farther from home than he''s ever been. But Chickadee is not afraid because he remembers the saying his grandmother taught him: small things have great power. To find his way back to his home and his family, Chickadee must make a daring escape, forge unlikely friendships and set out on the most exciting and dangerous journey he''s ever taken. This story of Chickadee and his family is based on Louise Erdrich''s own family history.

“A fiercely imagined tale of love and loss, a story that manages to transform tragedy into comic redemption, sorrow into heroic survival.” —New York Times “[A] beguiling family saga….A captivating jigsaw puzzle of longing and loss whose pieces form an unforgettable image of contemporary Native American life.” —People A New York Times bestselling author, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, Louise Erdrich is an acclaimed chronicler of life and love, mystery and magic within the Native American community. A hauntingly beautiful story of a mysterious woman who enters the lives of two families and changes them forever, Erdrich’s classic novel, The Antelope Wife, has enthralled readers for more than a decade with its powerful themes of fate and ancestry, tragedy and salvation. Now the acclaimed author of Shadow Tag and The Plague of Doves has radically revised this already masterful work, adding a new richness to the characters and story while bringing its major themes into sharper focus, as it ingeniously illuminates the effect of history on families and cultures, Ojibwe and white.

"[In this] story of a young Ojibwa girl, Omakayas, living on an island in Lake Superior around 1847, Louise Erdrich is reversing the narrative perspective used in most children''s stories about nineteenth-century Native Americans. Instead of looking out at ''them'' as dangers or curiosities, Erdrich, drawing on her family''s history, wants to tell about ''us'', from the inside. The Birchbark House establishes its own ground, in the vicinity of Laura Ingalls Wilder''s ''Little House'' books." --The New York Times Book Review

When Irene America discovers that her artist husband, Gil, has been reading her diary, she begins a secret Blue Notebook, stashed securely in a safe-deposit box. There she records the truth about her life and marriage, while turning her Red Diary—hidden where Gil will find it—into a manipulative charade. As Irene and Gil fight to keep up appearances for their three children, their home becomes a place of increasing violence and secrecy. And Irene drifts into alcoholism, moving ever closer to the ultimate destruction of a relationship filled with shadowy need and strange ironies. Alternating between Irene''s twin journals and an unflinching third-person narrative, Louise Erdrich''s Shadow Tag fearlessly explores the complex nature of love, the fluid boundaries of identity, and the anatomy of one family''s struggle for survival and redemption.

The group embraces everyone, from the local banker to the town drunk, the sheriff, the other butcher in Argus, and an elusive drifter, part Ojibwe, part French, whose balancing act is a wonder to behold.".

“These molten poems radiate with the ferocity of desire, and in them Erdrich does not spin verse so much as tell tales—of betrayal and revenge, of hunting and being hunted.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune A passionate book of poetry from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Louise Erdrich. In this important collection, Erdrich has selected the best poems from her two previous books of poetry, Jacklight and Baptism of Desire, and added 19 new poems. In an entirely unique fashion, Original Fire unfolds the themes and introduces the characters of some of Erdrich’s most acclaimed fiction. The beloved storyteller Nanapush, most recently seen in The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, appears in these poems as the questing rascal Potchikoo. And a series of poems called “The Butcher’s Wife”—dating from 1984—contains, in embryo, the story of her novel, The Master Butchers Singing Club.

In a cabin in the Turtle Mountains of South Dakota, the woodburning stove provided warmth, cooking heat, a glowing screen for a young girl''s imagination. It was the true heart of the home, which the girl didn''t realize until electricity came to the cabin and the stove was replaced.

In their only fully collaborative literary work, Michael Dorris and Louise Erdrich have written a gripping novel of history, suspense, recovery, and new beginnings. The Crown of Columbus chronicles the adventures of a pair of mismatched lovers--Vivian Twostar, a divorced, pregnant anthropologist, and Roger Williams, a consummate academic, epic poet, and bewildered father of Vivian''s baby--on their quest for the truth about Christopher Columbus and themselves. When Vivian uncovers what is presumed to be the most diary of Christopher Columbus, she and Roger are drawn into a journey from icy New Hampshire to the idyllic Caribbean in search of "the greatest treasure of Europe." Lured by the wild promise of redeeming the past, they are plunged into a harrowing race against time and death that threatens--and finally changes--their lives. A rollicking tale of adventure, The Crown of Columbus is also contemporary love story and a tender examination of parenthood and passion.

A second book of poetry by Louise Erdich, author of the bestselling and award winning novels Love Medicine, The Beet Queen and Tracks. Baptisim by blood, water, or desire is necessary for salvation in Roman Catholic tradition, and baptism of desire in the term used for the leap of trust by which a sincere believer can experience spiritual regeneration.Louise Erdrich''s poems are acts of redemption. Everywhere evident is Erdrich''s unique capacity for finding the perfect word, the fresh, yet absolutely right, metaphor that makes her wrk both profound and accessable.