Connie A. Jacobs
The Novels of Louise Erdrich: Stories of Her People
New York: Peter Lang, 2001. Pp. 260. $29.95

Reviewed by Axel Knoenagel

Literature by North American natives has undergone a significant critical reevaluation during the last thirty years. Works by authors such as N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Gerald Vizenor have become part of the literary canon and are now regularly taught in university courses. The commercially most successful native author is Louise Erdrich. Her novels about the lives of natives and mixed-bloods on and off a reservation in North Dakota have by now reached an audience of millions and have been translated into several languages.

In her study The Novels of Louise Erdrich, Connie A. Jacobs attempts to show the significance of Indian narrative traditions for the works of this author of mixed Chippewa and German ancestry. As the subtitle of the book suggests, Jacobs reads novels such as Tracks, The Beet Queen, or Tales of Burning Love as deeply influenced by the culture of Erdrich's fellow natives: "Erdrich … assume[s] the role of the traditional communal storyteller as (she) creatively approximate[s] the storytelling situation in a written format" (41). The integration of Erdrich and her writings into the cultural traditions of her Chippewa ancestors is Jacobs's central interest. Since knowledge of these traditions cannot be automatically assumed, Jacobs spends considerable time outlining the history of the Chippewa and their cultural traditions. Hence, the study presents chapters such as "The Formation of the Turtle Mountain Band" and "Animal Helpers and Totems," which are historical accounts complete with maps and list of important dates. Even more important is the explanation of the narrative traditions that Jacobs sees Erdrich translating into a modern novelistic form. At times, therefore, Erdrich's fiction disappears completely from sight. Instead, Jacobs provides the background necessary for the conclusion that Erdrich "appropriates the role of the traditional tribal storyteller to serve as a receptacle and bearer of culture" (85).

When Jacobs turns to Erdrich's fiction, she reads the novels not as separate works but rather as "one long story cycle" (182). In this Erdrich follows the native narrative tradition that individual stories form integrated parts of a larger whole known to the listener. In her discussion Jacobs moves easily from novel to novel when she concentrates on individual themes and characters. Jacobs's thematic conclusions are rather simplistic: "Love as the most powerful of all medicines is the major theme of Erdrich's novels.… The task of trying to understand and accept love in all its facets comprises the heart of Erdrich's novels" (146); "her intent is to show families as the collective reality of the tribe" (108). The Novels of Louise Erdrich offers a survey of the author's oeuvre in the context of her cultural background rather than a detailed discussion of individual aesthetic or thematic concerns. Jacobs's general conclusion that Erdrich's novels "are a testimony to the strength and endurance of a people whose will to survive remains unchecked by agents seeking its demise" (190) is not particularly new, but the well annotated and documented book makes its points in a convincing manner.