The Bingo Palace | Social Concerns & Themes

The Bingo Palace Social Concerns/Themes

Writers have been known to extend trilogies and tetralogies, to change their vision of completeness, but it looks as if Erdrich is serious in closing out her tetralogy on Chippewa life with The Bingo Palace. While Love Medicine (1984), The Beet Queen (1986), and Tracks (1988) have some characters that occur in more than one novel, Erdrich in The Bingo Palace brings back characters from all previous books when possible in the flesh; when not, in memory or dream fantasy. The novel closest to The Bingo Palace is Love Medicine (please see separate entry); Lipsha Morrissey is a major character in the latest novel, but Lyman Lamartine, Albertine Johnson, Marie Kashpaw, Lulu Lamartine, Gerry Nanapush, June Morrissey, and Zelda Kashpaw reprise their roles from the earlier novel. Fleur Pillager from Tracks in her nineties is a real, a ghostly, and a mythic presence in this closing novel, while Dot Adare...
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