Sherman Alexie's screenplay Smoke Signals (1998) tells the story of Victor and Thomas, two young Native American men who take a journey to collect Victor's father's ashes. Along the way, these two very different men draw on their common heritage and learn from each other. Smoke Signals was made into a movie in 1998.

Jacklight (1984) is Erdrich's first collection of poetry and contains some poems she wrote in college. Through these poems, she explores themes of romantic love and her mixed heritage.

Erdrich's debut novel, Love Medicine (1984), contains fourteen chapters that also function as stand-alone stories. The stories are held together by common characters, themes, and setting, so each story has relevance to the others.

Edited by John L. Purdy and James Ruppert, Nothing But the Truth: An Anthology of Native American Literature (2001) includes selections from a wide variety of contemporary Native...