A novel-in-stories about passion, family, and the importance of cultural identity, Love Medicine examines the struggle to balance Native American tradition with the modern world. Using an eclectic range of comic and tragic voices, Louise Erdrich leads the reader through the interwoven lives of two Chippewa families living in North Dakota. This modern classic is an often sad, sometimes funny look at the ways family and tradition bind us together.
The Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to revitalize the role of literary reading in American popular culture. Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, a 2004 NEA report, identified a critical decline in reading for pleasure among American adults. The Big Read addresses this issue by bringing communities together to read, discuss, and celebrate books and writers from American and world literature.
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Louise Erdrich (Photo by Persia Erdrich, courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers)
Gary Raven of the Ojibwa First Nation in Hollow Water, Manitoba, Canada, harvesting cat tail root, a traditional medicine. (Photo by Peter Essick/Aurora/Getty Images)
Louise Erdrich (Photo courtesy HarperCollins Publishers)
