SOURCE: Taylor, Linda. “On- and Off-Reservation.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4273 (22 February 1985): 196.

In the following review, Taylor compliments Erdrich's narrative structure and examination of issues relevant to Native Americans in Love Medicine.

Set in North Dakota and depicting the lives of the sometimes loosely connected, sometimes over-connected members of the Kashpaw and Lamartine families. (Chippewa Indians interbred with white trash), Love Medicine is a novel about survival, about going home (both locally and metaphysically), about true and false spirits (gods, demons, powers). With seven narrators and an occasional word from the authorial voice, Louise Erdrich covers fifty years (1934-84) of her characters' on- and off-reservation lives. The narratives overlap; they are composed of memories and current events. Each narrator is innocent about, while contributing to, the wider significance of the book. So, Nector Kashpaw, in his forties in 1957, tells how the priest at his high school “would teach no...