This volume of new essays provides the first book-length critical assessment of the fiction of America's best-known contemporary writer of Native American heritage.

Louise Erdrich is arguably the most prolific and prominent contemporary writer of American Indian descent in North America today. Her novels and short stories have won great critical acclaim and are widely taught in American and world literature courses.

This collection of original ssays focuses on Erdrich's writings rooted in the Chippewa experience. Premier scholars of Native American literature investigate narrative structure, signs of ethnicity, the notions of luck and chance in Erdrich's narrative cosmology, her use of hunting metaphors, her efforts to counter stereotypes of American Indian women, her use of comedy in exploring American Indians' tragic past, her intentions underlying the process of revision in Love Medicine, and other subjects. 

Including a variety of theoretical approaches, this book provides a comprehensive examination of Erdrich's work, making it more accessible to new readers and richer to those already familiar with her work.

 

This revised and expanded edition of Beidler and Barton’s indispensable A Reader’s Guide to the Novels of Louise Erdrich builds on the sellout success of the first edition. Every serious reader of Erdrich’s fiction will want access to this comprehensive new edition, which includes valuable new material.

• Completely updated with information on four new novels published since the first edition: The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, The Master Butchers Singing Club, Four Souls, and The Painted Drum

• Easy-to-use genealogical charts for the various families

• A map and geographical details about the settings for the novels

• A detailed composite dictionary of characters (even including the minor characters)

• A glossary of all of the Ojibwe words, phrases, and sentences that Erdrich, an astoundingly versatile and energetic Native American author, uses in her panoply of novels