Louise Erdrich positions herself as a contemporary tribal storyteller with her interlocking tales of her Chippewa people and her German-American ancestors. From the tribe’s struggle to survive ( Tracks ), to the Depression ( The Beet Queen ), to the mid-twentieth century ( Love Medicine ), to contemporary times ( The Bingo Palace, Tales of Burning Love, and The Antelope Wise ), Erdrich sympathetically, compassionately, and realistically renders a portrait of people striving to survive governmental bureaucracy, Catholic Church intrusion, and climatic severity.
