This is an unsentimental account of a hunting-gathering life. Even with guns and metal knives, the Falcon faced starvation so frequently that it seemed practically routine. One of the saddest sentences is a simple, somewhat relieved declarative about a fever sweeping the area: "Only one of my children died."

The writing is intense, and builds slowly. Tanner is anything but dramatic, but the events of his life command respect. This is a book that no author could have created artficially: its power is natural.

Nonetheless, I would have liked to learn something about where, when, and by whom the book was written. I suspect my Penguin paperback may be missing something. Page 228 refers me to a note at the end of the volume, but it is not there.

Generally, I do not care for Introductions. However, the Introduction by Louise Erdrich is worth reading carefully, before and after reading the narrative.

This appears to be a reprint of the original text published by Ross & Haines in 1956. There were only two thousand copies originally printed.

"The Falcon" is the autobiography of Shaw-Shaw-Wa Be-Na-Se or John Tanner, a White Indian captured by the Shawnee along the Ohio River in 1789 and later sold to an Ojibwa family in northern Michigan. He went on to live a long and fascinating life among the Indians of the Old Northwest working as a trapper for the Hudson Bay Company and serving as the interpreter at the trading post at Sault St. Marie. He spent some time searching out his white family in Kentucky before returning to Michigan to be with his Indian children, forever spurning the white way of life. He went on to write this narrative in 1830 shortly before becoming a murder suspect and disappearing into the north woods forever.

Tanner's narrative is truly amazing for it's matter-of-fact style and the wealth of information it contains on every facet of Indian life in the late 18th and early 19th century including hunting, family life, Indian-white relations, foodways, views on war and murder, even attitudes toward sexual orientation. Tanner tells a story from the point of view of a man who has lived a hard life but is determined to live it as well as he is able. He makes no romantic notions about the Indians nor does he have sentimental longings for his white family. Unlike other famous captivity narratives like those of Mary Rowlandson, James Smith, or Oliver Spencer, this story is of the unredeemed captive who willingly chooses to embrace the neo-lithic lifestyle and the hardships that such a life entails, but makes no regrets of his life choices.

The historical and ethnographical information contained here alone makes it worthwhile reading, but the pure human content the author puts into this work makes it truly great.

Garrod & Larimore's First Person, First Peoples is a fine collection of personal accounts of leaving home. The stories are at once unique and universal. They are expressive of an experience to which Native Americans can truly relate, and yet, set on the campus of one of America's most selective colleges, the stories are from a elite few who may be speaking of an experience that is virtually impossible to share. This is valuable as an oral history, and perhaps more importantly, as a voice of the Native American which remains too infrequently captured. Still, we must find those voices which are seldom heard, rather than continuing the habit of letting the elite culture speak for us all.

This was a truly wonderful and accessible book about Native American educational achievment. The story of Dartmouth College and its relationship to Native American education is captivating. The honesty of the students is at time heartbreaking and yet is continually inspiring.

If you decide to read this book, get ready to be reading the same poem over and over again. It is hard to understand at first, which is why my first impression of it was bad, but once you understand it, it's a pretty decent book of poems. The only odd part about it is it's random story in the middle. So I say,if you like Erdrich, you'll like the book.

I first stumbled upon "Baptism of Desire" 8 years ago when I was pregnant with our first son. The work inspired me and I still refer to it often. Erdrich has a poignant and sensitive use of language. Although repitious in focus or theme each work peers from a unique corner of Erdrich's mind and is successful because it questions without diadatic overtones. In short it is honest. Brilliant.

Erdrich's novels are all about the same characters and setting, and people and stories overlap and intertwine. But this is the only novel that doesn't feel complete in and of itself. Parts of the book are simply wonderful--particularly, Lipsha's account of how he came to get a tatoo. Worth the price of admission for that story alone--but still, for an Erdrich fan, a bit of a disappointment.

I had not expected to like this book... when I began it, I was sure that I would have to force myself to the end because I tend to like the romantic happily-ever-after sort of story, but once I began, Erdrich caught me in the absurdities of the world of Lipsha. I have read many reviews that do not find Lipsha an especially likable character, but I liked him despite the fact that he was the sort who would instinctively choose the wrong way to do anything. The sheer absurdity of Erdrich's work, including a food fight in Dairy Queen between romantic rivals, a vision quest that brought forth a talking skunk, and a ghostly mother who wanted the T-bird that her insurance money bought, adds just enough humor to make even the defeats of Lipsha amusing rather than tragic. The book is worth a try, especially if seen in terms of Lipsha's returning home to find the kinship with the land that he had lost -- a slow healing process. The skunk tells him, "It ain't real estate," and at the base of all the other adventures he begins to realize this, but as with so many young people, the discovery is slow coming and fraught with disasters

In her novels, Louise Erdrich has never strayed far from the northern plains of her youth, nor the interior landscape of a woman straddling the border of two cultures.

And she doesn't stray far in "Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country," her deeply personal, non-fiction reflection on the land and lore of some of her indigenous ancestors.

Part travelogue and part memoir, Erdrich takes her infant daughter by small boat to Lake of the Woods in southern Ontario to visit powerful, centuries-old rock paintings still read by contemporary Ojibwe as "teaching and dream guides." She sees these cultural artifacts, like books, as intimate art and communications that transcend centuries.

But this trek among the myths and spirits of an ancient culture begins and ends -- and sometimes pauses along the way -- in the contemporary life of one of America's most superb storytellers. It explores the edges of the sometimes-treacherous zones in Erdrich's personal landscape: Family, love and children.

"Books and Islands" is the latest title in National Geographic's Directions series, travel memoirs by some of the world's most highly regarded literary figures, including David Mamet's "South of the Northeast Kingdom," and John Edgar Wideman's recent "The Island: Martinique."

Fans of Erdrich's earlier fiction, such as "Love Medicine" or "The Master Butchers Singing Club," will glimpse the very foundation of her literary vision in this small, easily read volume, which also includes several original drawings by Erdrich.

Erdrich's collection of poems is rich with emotion and rewards close perusal. Her symbolism and metaphors are fairly accessible, although some of her work draws from a culture-specific background which may hinder complete understanding. This occasional obscurity does not significantly limit her work's effectiveness, however, as it lends a fullness and personality to her poetry that comes from individual experience.

There is something secret and dark contained here, a sense of the mysterious which draws you in and leaves you with a sense of not quite capturing the whole meaning. For those who have read Love Medicine and its ensuing novels, expect the same emotion, but more tightly compressed and better controlled. A satisfying read.

Tracks was a very interesting novel. The author Louise Erdrich has a style about her writing. The book is written from two different points of view. A young woman and an old man tell a tail that kept me reading on. The story starts with the introduction of one of the main characters Fleur. Fleur is found almost frozen to death but is nursed back to health by Nanapush on of the narrators. Flue grows up surrounded with rumors and bad luck. Fleur has a few accidents involving water and after that she changes forever. A few males that try and court her wind up drowned. People start to wonder about her and she is thought of as surrounded by dark magic and dangerous. This is just a demonstrating of how complex the plot is.
The novel is very action packed and full of surprises. The novel has a lot of talk about magic and superstition. The way that the book is narrated is the most impressive thing. The two different personalities of Nanapush and Pauline the two narrators are what make this novel great. You hear what Nanapush thinks and sees and then hear the same for Pauline. The two different personalities make me think about which one is right and I find my self thinking along with one of the narrators.
This book is not for any quiet reading; it jumps out and shows you a side of Native Americans that you don't hear about. You also see the difference between the Native American culture and the white American culture. The plot is well developed and makes for some complicated reading. I liked Tracks and would like to read one of Louise Erdrich other novels. Tracks is a dark book with all the magic and superstition but it had moments of passion, anger and surprises. I would recommend this book to almost any one who posses the reading ability.

In all of her work, Louise Erdrich writes with rich visual language, and always from the heart. Until I read Tracks, I held up Love Medicine as Erdrich's best, and one of my all-time favorite novels. Tracks surpasses Love Medicine in scope, personality, and drama. The early lives of Erdrich's legends - Fleur and Moses Pillager, Eli and Nector, Lulu Nanapush,the Morrisseys, and even Sister Leopolda unfold in the despair and heartache of the early part of this century, when the Chippewas were just begining to lose their land and their lives to alcohol, disease, and other pressures from the ever-encroaching whites. What I love about both Love Medicine and Tracks, more than, say, The Beet Queen is the amazing number of characters Erdrich can master, and the way she interweaves their lives. Tracks does Love Medicine one better by making the circle of voices a bit smaller, and the stories more intensely personal. This book made me cry at work and laugh out loud on the subway. If you love the way Erdrich creates many varried personalities to tell a story, you will love this book. If you've never read any of her work, this is an excellent place to start.

After reading several different Native American authors, I finally had the privilege of reading Louise Erdrich. TRACKS captured my imagination as I listened to Nanapush and Pauline tell their stories. Erdrich brilliantly has the two narrators cast doubt upon each other's tales- a tactic which makes the book all the more enthralling to read. Pauline's zealous quest for sainthood, filled with sacrifices that border on ridiculousness, contrasts with Fleur's relationship to nature, embodied in the forest and the lake creature, Misshepeshu. Erdrich's characters endear themselves to the readers with their first-person revelations, their bawdy senses of humor, and their uncanny strength. The sexual banter between Margaret and Nanapush brings the characters to thriving, realistic life. TRACKS presents these characters against the backdrop of a dwindling forest, which government agents consume piece by piece, selling to American logging companies. As Fleur and Nanapush's homeland disappears, their struggle to control their own future becomes present and touching. Each of the characters reaches out in a different way to attempt to determine their future in some way. TRACKS deserves several reads, and Louise Erdrichs deserves high praise for an incredible and entertaining work.

Louise Erdrich is a fine, accomplished writer. Somehow, it seemed to me that this novel exhibited signs of subject exhaustion. I believe that _Love Medicine_ is proof that Erdrich should be held in high regard as a writer, as the talent is truly there. That work also served as a template for some of her later works, a fact which I am a bit disappointed by since I feel that none of them have achieved the same level of poetic impact. _Tales of Burning Love_ is well written, but I feel that the story drags in places, and can be tedious to sit through; it helped that I read the majority of it while riding the bus. I was sorry to see her using the same characters again. They are strong, worthy, and well-developed characters, but in the context of this particular story they seemed more contrived.

Louise Erdrich is a masterful novelist, capable of writing spellbinding prose and developing complex, wonderfully human characters. In *Tales of Burning Love*, all of these talents are apparent, and the novel is, if nothing else, a "good read." If some of her past works have tended toward a plodding pace and an ethereal kind of tone, this one is different in that it finds Ehrlich creating a veritable snowstorm of action and events. In fact, there are so many bizarre twists and turns, so many eerie occurrences laden with ironies and sly twists of fate that one suspects that Erdrich may here be trying to broaden her audience so as to make her work more commercially successful. It was this shift toward the tawdry, the sensational, and the lowest common denominator in terms of target audience that I found myself resenting by the end of the book.

The male protagonist, Jack Mauser, has few or no redeeming qualities, as far as I can discern. He's cruel, moody, unstable, and neither terribly bright nor sensitive. Yet one of the principal premises of the book is that this man is veritably irresistible to a variety of women, four of whom he marries. Perhaps this makes the book a "woman's book," inasmuch as some female readers might find some point of identity with these women in the way that they just can't help loving this jerk, despite their better judgment. But I found the whole swirl of affections and passions surrounding Jack Mauser annoying and unconvincing.

Even at her worst, Louise Erdrich is a terrific novelist, and this novel is well worth reading simply for the masterful way that Erdrich tells a story, makes transitions, and creates moods and visions. But this is not her best novel.

I read this my first Erdrich novel after a writer whose opinion I respect recommended her. This is the tale of Jack Mauser and his many wives-- maybe five altogether. The plot has as many twists and turns as a blizzard in North Dakota where much of the action occurs. Watch for what Ms. Erdrich does with the title near the end of the book. She's always ahead of us.

At times I thought that Jack isn't worth all the attention he gets from his women. He is after all a drunk, a womanizer and a cheater in business, truly one of the types that George and Tammy sang about. But his women often get the upper hand, sometimes quite literally. One of them in order to show Jack that "it hurts to be a girl," ties him up and plucks out most of his facial hair in what has to be one of the funniest scenes I've read in a long time.

The story, sometimes outlandish, probably wouldn't have worked with someone with less talent. But these characters with all their warts breathe. I never doubted for a moment their humanity. Erdrich is wonderful at describing a character with few words -- or with many if the occasion calls for it.

Finally, don't you have to love a writer who says that "no blue is ordinary. Blue is the stuff of the soul"?

In Erdrich's companion novel to Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, a character notices a spider's web in a baby's hair. For that novel and for this beautiful work, the metaphor is duly noted. The characters are involved with each other and in each other's lives through an elaborate, complicated and emotional web that exists among them connecting them and making the episodic storytelling and shifting narrative voices appropriate and enriching.

The pay-off in the book comes about half to three-quarters through it, when the reader realizes that the sections are joined loosely and not by any kind of chronology or specific plot line. Read them for the separate jewels they are. (Erdrich is particularly lovely read aloud, but to read this book aloud, all participants must embrace the feelings of chaos that come early on from the narrative method she employs.) In the end, the deeper connections will astonish and amaze.

Louise Erdrich's novel, Love Medicine covers a fifty year time span through the lives of several generations of North Dakota Indians. Many of the chapters appeared as short stories in publications such as The Best American Short Stories of 1993, New England Quarterly/Bread Loaf, and The O. Henry Collection. Louise Erdrich weaves the novel together in a masterful and intricately-beaded collage. Love Medicine is a vivid and sensually evocative account of communal Indian life, culture, and landscape. Characters in this novel experience glory, shame, romance, and tragedy. In traditional fashion, women bear and raise the young, bake the bread, gather and preserve the food, while the men hunt for game, hunt for women, and drink too much. For the most part, male-female stereotypes apply to Erdrich's characters, but there are some exceptions--June Kashpaw and Lulu Nanapush, to name a few. Louise Erdrich takes the reader into different characters's viewpoints within each chapter. As the novel unfolds, one sees the intertwinning, convoluted, and potentially dangerous relationships among the characters, families, and tribes. Some of their obstacles could be encountered by any character, but a lot of their problems stem from being Indians in white man's society. Erdrich, herself a North Dakota Chippewa descendant, does and outstanding job depicting Indian culture in untamed landscape. An authentic intimacy with the Indians permeates throughout the book. The reader feels the experience of gathering Juneberries alongside Grandma Kashpaw, feels the passion between Lulu Nanapush and Nector Kashpaw, and feels the heartaches and sturdy endurance of Marie Lazaar Kashpaw. The overall tone of this book in proportionate to the real-life predicament of the American Indian. While Erdrich captures the wholesome and honorable spirit of her people, the anger, sense of injustice, and the Indians's struggling attempts to cope with their plight, comes hurling across the page like a tomahawk in motion.s. Love Medicine offe

This is one of my all time favorite books, the characters are all so strange, and yet they feel like family. There is this wonderful web of chance, love and magic that flows through the whole book. Each time I read Love Medicine I find myself longing for some of Erdrich's magic in my life. Her characters suffer and love and hate with all the feeling they have, they do not have an easy road, but some how it all feels true.

I read this book on the strength of my experience with "A Yellow Raft in Blue Water" by Michael Dorris. There is no comparison between the two books.
"Crown of Columbus" is fundamentally a mystery (the crown) but makes an attempt at character development and at political correctness and throws in something related to university professors and poetry. None of it works together.
It was obvious, about two-thirds of the way through the book what the solution to the mystery was going to be. The characters were not real enough to keep my interest in whether they developed or did not.
The final burden that I was unable to bear was the several pages devoted to the male lead's reciting his poetry.
Not to my taste.

Anti-climactic is the best single phrase to describe this book. I guess it depends on what you want in a novel. It starts out with the air of mystery surrounding the "Crown of Columbus" and what it actually is; sort of a historical mystery, although fictional. The book then becomes a story about the two main characters and their on-again/off-again romance of opposites. Most of the book is about this romance and the action and resolution of the mystery don't really get going until the very end. By the time you find out what the "Crown" is, it is sort of "so what?" In other words, not very satisfying. I wouldn't recommend this book.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. Once I got past the misleading synopsis on back of the novel and accepted the novel for what it really was, I became intensely involved. Roger Williams and Vivian Twostar are stereotypes, which is the point. They are cariactures; Dorris and Erdrich having a little fun with the stereotypes people have placed on them. The depth of character found in Erdrich's other novels is clearing missing; however, _The Crown of Columbus_ is a different kind of novel. It is a modern romance, detective, adventure, and historical novel at the same time. I recommend this book to someone looking for an entertaining read; anyone seeking high literature should read Erdrich's _Tracks_