SOURCE: Farrell, Susan. “Erdrich's Love Medicine.” Explicator 56, no. 2 (winter 1998): 109-12.

In the following essay, Farrell provides an interpretation of the symbolism behind June's death in the “The World's Greatest Fishermen” chapter of Love Medicine.

Set mostly on a Chippewa reservation in North Dakota, Louise Erdrich's first novel, Love Medicine, opens on the morning before Easter Sunday with the death of June Kashpaw, an event that sets into motion both memories and actual returns to the reservation by the other characters. Erdrich's Easter setting is important, as is the title of the first section. “The World's Greatest Fishermen,” which elicits images both of Christ—able to feed a crowd on only two small fish—and of Uncle Eli, a traditional Chippewa fisherman. This pull between Christianity and traditional American Indian beliefs is everywhere evident in this opening chapter, especially in June, a character for whom a sense of balance...