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Overview

Love Medicine, first published in 1984 and revised in 1993 and 2009, is American author Louise Erdrich’s first novel. It follows the lives of three Chippewa families in North Dakota: the Kashpaws, Lamartines, and Morrisseys. The collection of intertwined short stories is narrated from 1934 to 1984. Erdrich, who is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of the Chippewa Indians, set Love Medicine on an unnamed reservation in northern North Dakota, Fargo, and Minneapolis-St. Paul.

This award-winning lyrical novel explores the theme of cultural endurance by tracing some of the factors that threaten it, such as assimilation, the justice system, racism, prejudice, domestic violence, infidelity, PTSD, and alcohol abuse.

Read the overall summary, the overall analysis, and explanations of important quotes from Love Medicine. SparkNotes also offers a separate, comprehensive Study Guide for “The Red Convertible,” one of the stories in Love Medicine.

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