She followed with three bestsellers: 'The Beet Queen,' 'Tracks,' and 'The Bingo Palace,' as well as 'The Crown of Columbus,' another bestseller she co-authored with her husband, Michael Dorris. Despite a modest first print run, 'Love Medicine' was a phenomenal word-of-mouth success, selling 400,000 copies in hardback and winning the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award. Erdrich started her literary career as a poet, supporting herself by working at a Kentucky Fried Chicken and on road construction crews.Īt 28, Erdrich published her first novel 'Love Medicine' - which had been rejected by numerous publishing houses - when her husband, the author Michael Dorris, resubmitted it, posing as her literary agent. Erdrich's parents worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs as teachers on a nearby North Dakota reservation and she recalls that her father regularly recited memorized poetry - Frost and Byron - to her and her six siblings. Like many of her characters, Jack included, Erdrich is of mixed Native American descent her mother is French Ojibwa, while her father, who according to family legend was born in a tornado, is German American. As the snow buries their car, the women stave off the bitter cold and fatal sleep by telling each other very different tales of Jack's ever-changing financial and amorous arrangements. 'how is it that we all, constantly, apologize for that womanizing, weak-spirited, failed contractor, our husband?' gripes Eleanor to the other three ex-wives of Jack, an irresistible lout around whom Louise Erdrich spins her latest multi-voiced novel, 'Tales of Burning Love.' Driving away from Jack's funeral the wives are caught in a sudden squall that strands them under an overpass outside of Fargo, North Dakota.

Tales of Burning Love by Louise Erdrich