Summary Of Love Medicine By Louise Erdrich

Throughout history, there have been many influential writers who have in one way or another affected the way in which we look at life. One of those writers is Louise Erdrich. Louise Erdrich was born on July 6, 1954 in Little Falls Minnesota. Since she was very young, she began to write stories because she was encouraged by her father to do so. She then went on to college to pursue her career and majored in English and Creative writing. She got married in October of 1981 and due to difficulties with her husband, they divorced after fifteen years of marriage. They had six children in total three of their children were adopted, and the other three the couple had together. Louise Erdrich has written many stories and books, and many of the books

that she has written were influenced on her heritage as well as Native Americans, their history, their traditions, and her life experiences, many of her books represent cultural significance.
Louise Erdrich wrote many novels all of which provide some type of similarity between them one of her books is Love Medicine. In Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich presents Lipsha who is a man who has healing powers. Erdrich first novel received many honors some being the “Los Angeles Times Award for Best Novel of the Year, the Janet Kaufman Award for Best First Novel, and the Virginia McCormack Scully Prize for Best Book Featuring Indians or Chicanos” (Stookey 29) as well as other awards that followed.
As Erdrich introduces the reader to this book she used the landscape and the environment in the community in which characters live in with legacies of generations and the relationship that characters have with the environment.

This book truly explores the generations because her story takes place over the course of fifty years, in the lives of three generations of related families.” Erdrich’ writes at the “edge” of the genre of the novel” (Stookey 31) with this, the reader is able to get an idea that Erdrich is not a normal author. A normal author that does not do the normal protagonist especially with this story Love Medicine. Throughout this story she explores topics that most families could encounter departure, returns, journeys through life, harsh moments that any normal human may encounter through their life. As well as characters, experiencing dissolution of family, something that is unusual about Erdrich is that each character tells stories in their own voices. The character’s stories all seem very realistic, living in North Dakota, being and confronting the harsh life of being a Native Americans. One Story from Love Medicine is the “The Red Convertible” which talks about two brothers which seem to be very close, one of the brothers leaves to the war and when he comes back he seems very affected, he is depressed, and not the same as he used to be. His brother tries to get to him back but cannot do so and his brother ends up killing himself. With this, she presents

some of the circumstances that occur in everyday life.
Another of Erdrich’s novels is Tracks.

In Tracks Erdrich presents the devastation that occurs with the Chippewa or Ojibway people. She presents the people who are faced with devastation and starvation and the situations that women are faced with during this time due to the lack of rights for women. After this incident, one of the girls gets pregnant and has a difficult pregnancy and difficult child birth. This novel also takes place in the 20th century and in Argus which also happens to be the same town in which Beet Queen takes

place.
One of Louise Erdrich’s famous books is Beet Queen. In Beet Queen by Louise, the audience is presented with the story of Mary and Karl. The story takes place in a time period of forty years but begins during the Great Depression. Louise Erdrich also presents the audience the idea of what the effects of the great depression had on American people, but in order to fully understand what the connections made in this novel it is very important to have an idea of what the Great Depression was about.
The Great Depression was an economic depression that was very severe and lasted from 1929 to 1939 (History.com). It was until the United States enter World War II that the United States economy began to get better. During the Great Depression many people and Americans were faced with many difficulties as many Americans lost their main source of income and many experienced unemployment. During this time food and jobs were not easy to get and many people suffered from starvation (Amadeo 2017). When Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected as president he adopted many programs to bring the economy back up, some of the programs he passed helped raise the economy but it was not until World War II that the United States completely recovered.
Now that there is some knowledge about the Great Depression, it will be easier to understand the situation that was occurring at the beginning of Beet Queen. Mary and Karl are siblings and one day their mother abandons them. She decides to leave them, and her baby due to the difficult times that she is facing during the depression. She finds no other solution other than to abandon her kids because she can no longer take care of them. Mary and Karl end up losing their baby brother and then decide to go and look for their aunt who has a butcher shop, throughout the novel Erdrich focuses on letting the audience know what it is that happens to Karl and Mary and also introduces other characters which are important in the protagonists lives.