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(73 reviews)
Author: Visit Amazon's Louise Erdrich Page
ISBN : 0061787426
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Format: PDF
You can download Epub Love Medicine: Newly Revised Edition for everyone book mediafire, rapishare, and mirror link
From the Back Cover
The stunning first novel in Louise Erdrich's Native American series, Love Medicine tells the story of two families, the Kashpaws and the Lamartines. Written in Erdrich's uniquely poetic, powerful style, it is a multi-generational portrait of strong men and women caught in an unforgettable drama of anger, desire, and the healing power that is love medicine.
About the Author
Louise Erdrich lives with her family in Minnesota and is the owner of Birchbark Books, an independent bookstore. Ms. Erdrich is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, and this story—which will, in the end, span one hundred years in the life of an Ojibwe woman—was inspired when Ms. Erdrich and her mother, Rita Gourneau Erdrich, were researching their own family history. Chickadee begins a new part of the story that started with The Birchbark House, a National Book Award finalist; The Game of Silence, winner of the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction; and the acclaimed The Porcupine Year.
Ms. Erdrich is also the bestselling author of many critically acclaimed novels for adults, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Plague of Doves and National Book Award finalist The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse. She is also the author of the picture book Grandmother's Pigeon, illustrated by Jim LaMarche.
Books with free ebook downloads available Epub Love Medicine: Newly Revised Edition
- Series: P.S.
- Paperback: 400 pages
- Publisher: Harper Perennial; Revised edition (May 5, 2009)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0061787426
- ISBN-13: 978-0061787423
- Product Dimensions: 0.9 x 5.5 x 8.3 inches
- Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Epub Love Medicine: Newly Revised Edition
Louise Erdich, the author, is of German and Chippewa descent. The story is about the Chippewa (aka Ojibwa) living on a fictional reservation in North Dakota and how one person's death affects so many lives. Lke a "dark twisting river - the bed is deep and narrow" as it meanders through the land and time.
The first chapter describes June Kashpaw, Chippewa mother and wife, off the Reservation walking down the boom-town of Williston, North Dakota, thinking of taking a bus home to the reservation. She meets a man at a bar, has a brief liaison, and then freezes to death walking home in a snow storm. The stories following cascade and are held together by her death, how her children, husband (Gordie Kashpaw), and others on the reservation are touched by the murder.
The story meanders in a unstructured way through short stories - interconnected - but could easily stand on their own. There are 18 Chapters in the expanded version. Characters from Chippewa and Mixed Blood families talk in mostly first person and connected through relatives or lovers over decades. Each chapter starts with a new character telling a piece of the interconnected story from their viewpoint. It takes awhile to understand which character is talking. The timeline is choppy and hops back and forth from the 1930's to the 1980's. It would have been good to have a "family tree" at the end of the book to see more clearly the interrelationships. However, I feel guilty saying that as the Chippewa don't believe in human measurement - of numbers, time, inches, feet, or quantification - as they are "all just plays for cutting nature down to size." The Chippewa feel the "grand scheme of nature is not ours to measure.
Louise' Erdrich's Love Medicine is an intricate story centered on two Chippewa families, the Kashpaws and the Lamartines, and the way the family members interact with each other. The story begins with June, a beautiful woman, down on her luck, whose sudden and accidental death has a profound effect on the lives of the people who knew her. Readers travel back and forth in time with multiple characters, experiencing their lives as they unfold, watching as they make mistakes, recover, and then stumble again. We see how the American government impacts their lives, how Christian missionaries abuse their culture, and how, over time, proud people become mistrustful and vengeful, falling into alcoholism, violence and dead ends.
Native American contemporary history is pretty bleak. It's a story of almost complete annihilation, isolation, broken promises and misguided compromises. Even using the phrase "Native American" in a way is defeatist- even 100 years ago, people knew tribes as being distinct, having very different ideas about life and how to live it. Now, there are so few of them left that we group them all together and are completely unaware of the nuances that separate one tribe from another.
Louise Erdrich writes about all this, but indirectly, through a series of short stories interwoven with each other to form a novel. We meet so many characters, all of them flawed, none of them very likeable and yet we can empathize with every one. There is so much sadness in this book- so much lost potential, so much despair, so much waste, often symbolized by bouts of extreme drunkenness and violence.