Love Medicine The World’s Greatest Fishermen Summary & Analysis

Summary: The World’s Greatest Fishermen, Parts 1 and 2

Part 1 follows June Kashpaw, a middle-aged Chippewa woman, on her way to the bus on a Saturday morning before Easter in Williston, North Dakota in 1981. A mud engineer named Andy motions her into the Rigger Bar where they share a beer. He peels a pink egg and compares it to the color of June’s shirt, which June describes as her own shell. Andy convinces her to spend the evening with him. They go to another bar, and then ride in his truck to a country road where they awkwardly make love although he never undresses. When Andy passes out, June fumbles her way out of the truck and starts walking home in a heavy snow.

Part 2 is told from the first-person point-of-view of Albertine Johnson, June’s niece, a week later. It opens with a letter from Albertine’s mother saying that Aunt June is dead and buried. Albertine then relates June’s history, including details about her uncle who raised her, her marriage to her cousin, her son King, and her wayward ways. June had trouble keeping jobs but was always a good, loving aunt. Albertine, a medical student in Fargo, lies down in the grass grieving for her aunt. She goes home to visit and finds her mother, Zelda, and Aunt Aurelia talking about June as they bake pies. Marie and Nector Kashpaw arrive with June’s son King, King’s wife Lynette, and King and Lynette’s baby, King Junior. Nector is senile with age. He remembers dates but not events. Marie, Aurelia, and Zelda recall a memory from their childhood in which the children pretend to hang June and Marie punished them. Aurelia learns that King purchased his car with money from June’s insurance. Some in the family won’t ride in it because it came from June. Gordie and Eli show up. Some of the women get into Albertine’s car to go visit June’s gravestone, Marie telling them not to touch the pies.

Summary: The World’s Greatest Fishermen, Parts 3 and 4

Lipsha Morrissey joins Albertine and some others. Lipsha and King are half-brothers who don’t get along. Lipsha is June’s son, born during one of her splits with Gordie. The men talk about the animals they’ve killed—deer, skunk, soldiers, fox—and Lipsha leaves, upset. They quarrel about who is the best fisherman, as well as the words on King’s hat (“World’s Greatest Fisherman”). When Eli tells the best tale, he takes the hat, adjusts it, and wears it, angering Lynette who gave it to her husband. King and Lynette leave while Gordie tells a joke, but soon they hear fighting outside. King ravages his car, with Lynette inside, until Gordie wrestles him to the ground, King sobbing about his mother’s death. Gordie and Eli leave in the car, Lynette tends to King Junior back in the house, and Albertine joins Lipsha in the nearby field. While admiring the northern lights, Albertine thinks of June.

In Part 4, Albertine and Lipsha drink more wine and Lipsha admits that he is afraid of King, who once took a potshot at him. Albertine considers telling Lipsha that June was his mother but decides not to because he resents his mother for abandoning him. They fall asleep and wake to commotion in the kitchen. There, they find King trying to drown Lynette in the sink full of dishwater. Albertine tries to fight King off, even biting his ear, but he throws her across the room. Lipsha is not there. The pies are destroyed. When Albertine calls King’s attention to the pies, he is distracted, and Lynette escapes. King then leaves the house, ashamed. Outside, Lynette begs King to take her away in the car, insisting he only gets crazy when around his family. King and Lynette make love in the car while Albertine puts the hat under the mattress where King Junior sleeps soundly through it all. Albertine tries to salvage the pies, but admits that once they are broken, you cannot “put them right.”

Analysis: The World’s Greatest Fishermen

“The World’s Greatest Fishermen” was originally published as two short stories and then became the seed of the expanded narrative. In this story, Erdrich introduces many characters who will appear throughout the novel and establishes some of the major themes and motifs, such as issues between parents and children, alcoholism, memories of the past, warped family dynamics, and domestic abuse.

Part 1 establishes June as an important character, even though she dies the night in which the story opens. Her two sons, Lipsha and King, play large roles in Parts 2–4, and her influence is felt by everyone in the family. The conflict between the two sons will be fully explored in the novel, and both earlier and later than this incident will serve as the setting for the final act. In Part 1, June and Andy, fueled by alcohol, go off and spend an evening together that mysteriously ends in June’s disappearance and death. Eggs are often symbols of spring, fertility, rebirth, resurrection, and eternal life. Dominated by this symbol, June’s story establishes some of the novel’s dominant patterns: death, rebirth, homecoming, sexuality, alcoholism, and betrayal. When Lynette wails that she’d drink a few beers if she had to live in this family, she sets a tone and a challenge for the entire novel to come.

The scene at the family home begins in order and creation and ends in chaos and destruction. The women are baking pies, symbols of nourishment, domesticity, and creativity, but they will be soon be destroyed by the men. The men gather jovially, but they fight and bleed by the end. The only couple present pull into the yard in their new car with their baby, King Junior, but leave without the baby after a violent fight that could have ended in murder. In this story, alcohol and the traumatic past are the fuels for the family fires. Throughout the novel, readers will come to understand the reasons for the outburst and destruction and see it play itself out in many other ways.

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