51 pages • 1 hour read
Louise ErdrichA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Each of the linked stories in the novel explores questions of family’s influence on identity and community. The families of Erdrich’s novel are complicated, each containing different personalities and inspiring both internal and external conflicts. At the center of each of these conflicts is every character’s desire to be claimed, to experience a sense of belonging. This human need manifests in different ways for different characters. For Lipsha and Lyman, their secret or absent parents inhibit their understandings of their selves. For Marie and Lulu, their journey to find alternate homes than the ones they were born into motivates them to become excellent mothers when given the opportunity to create their own families. June Morrissey seeks belonging with fatal consequences, and King’s son Howard rejects belonging to a family formed around violence. The importance of being claimed by someone who loves you, who will give you their name, and will support you, is portrayed as an intrinsic need among all the characters in Love Medicine.
Still, Erdrich resists the idea that families are formed through simple acts of claiming and voluntary participation, or by biological relation. In this novel, families are both constructive and destructive. At times, the family unit is where people in trouble run to for comfort, such as when Henry Junior seeks comfort in Albertine after learning her connection to his family, or when Rushes Bear (Margaret) arrives to care for Marie.
By Louise Erdrich
Fight of the Century: Writers Reflect on 100 Years of Landmark ACLU Cases
Michael Chabon, ed., Ayelet Waldman, ed., Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Meg Wolitzer, Louise Erdrich, Héctor Tobar, Neil Gaiman, Jacqueline Woodson, Rabih Alameddine, Ayelet Waldman, Brenda J. Child, Michael Chabon, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Salman Rushdie, Jesmyn Ward, Aleksandar Hemon, George Saunders, Scott Turow, Timothy Egan, Steven Okazaki, Sergio de la Pava, Andrew Sean Greer, Geraldine Brooks, Anthony Doerr, Brit Bennett, Yaa Gyasi, Moriel Rothman-Zecher, William Finnegan, Marlon James, Morgan Parker, Jennifer Egan, David Cole, Lauren Groff, Ann Patchett, David Handler, C.J. Anders, Dave Eggers, Jonathan Lethem, Michael Cunningham, Elizabeth Strout, Li Yiyun
Fleur
Louise Erdrich
Future Home of the Living God
Louise Erdrich
LaRose
Louise Erdrich
Shadow Tag
Louise Erdrich
The Antelope Wife
Louise Erdrich
The Beet Queen
Louise Erdrich
The Bingo Palace
Louise Erdrich
The Birchbark House (Birchbark House, #1)
Louise Erdrich
The Game of Silence (Birchbark House, 2)
Louise Erdrich
The Leap
Louise Erdrich
The Master Butchers Singing Club
Louise Erdrich
The Night Watchman
Louise Erdrich
The Painted Drum
Louise Erdrich
The Plague of Doves
Louise Erdrich
The Red Convertible: Selected and New Stories, 1978-2008
Louise Erdrich
The Round House
Louise Erdrich
The Sentence
Louise Erdrich
The Shawl
Louise Erdrich
Tracks (Love Medicine. #3)
Louise Erdrich
Family
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Forgiveness
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Guilt
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Hate & Anger
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Historical Fiction
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Indigenous People's Literature
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Loyalty & Betrayal
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Memory
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National Book Critics Circle Award...
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Safety & Danger
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Sexual Harassment & Violence
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Valentine's Day Reads: The Theme of Love
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