SOURCE: MacDougall, Ruth Doan. “Engaging First Novel Records 50 Years on a Chippewa Reservation.” Christian Science Monitor 77, no. 3 (27 November 1984): 33.

In the following review, MacDougall praises Erdrich's characterizations in Love Medicine, calling the work “a funny, mystical and down-to-earth” novel.

I grew up with [my mother] in an aqua-and-silver trailer, set next to the old house on the land my great-grandparents were allotted when the government decided to turn Indians into farmers. … The main house, where all of my aunts and uncles grew up, is one big square room with a cooking shack tacked onto it. The house is a light peeling lavender now, the color of a pale petunia.

This is the family home of the Kashpaws on a Chippewa reservation in North Dakota, and the speaker is Albertine Johnson, one of the many narrators of this fine first novel [Love Medicine], which spans the years between 1934 and 1984.

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