Both her mother and her father, Ralph Erdrich, were teachers at the Indian school in Wahpeton, North Dakota, where Erdrich grew up. Mary Korll, her paternal grandmother, was of German descent and ran a butcher shop, much like Mary Adare in
The Beet Queen (1986). Her parents' commitment to education led Erdrich to the first coeducational class at Dartmouth, where she won her first poetry prize and graduated in 1976. Also at Dartmouth, Erdrich first met Michael Dorris, then a professor of anthropology. After various jobs teaching poetry and editing a Boston Indian Council newspaper as well as earning a master's degree from Johns Hopkins University, Erdrich returned to Dartmouth in 1981 as writer-in-residence.
On 10 October 1981 Erdrich married Dorris and began a stellar literary union with a tragic end. Dorris had previously adopted three children from a reservation. After their marriage Erdrich also adopted them, and the couple later had three children of their own. Dorris's editorial suggestions helped launch Erdrich's career and led to his own literary pursuits. Their extensive writing collaboration, so close that the couple agreed on every word, went uncredited until the novel The Crown of Columbus (1991) and a collection of travel essays, Route 2 (1991).
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