Tracks

Louise Erdrich has written I don't know how many novels featuring Fleur Pillager and her still-increasing North Dakota Chippewa clan. Tracks remains my favorite, mostly because of Nanapush, surely one of the most wonderful characters ever to inhabit the pages of a novel. "Talk is an old man's last vice," Nanapush says. When he gets ill, he says "I got well by talking. Death could not get a word in edgewise, grew discouraged, and traveled on." You won't, you'll sit at Nanapush's feet and never want to get up, not while he's still talking. My only complaint about Tracks is it's too short. The Beet Queen: A Novel (P.S.) and Love Medicine: A Novel (P.S.) are about the same characters, not really sequels or prequels, just more stories about the same great folks. You'll be happy you get more than one visit.

I read this book in a Native American Literature course about 12 years ago. My father is full blooded Native American and my teacher was white and I thought he couldn't teach me anything. I had a chip on my shoulder and my teacher knocked it off of me with this book. He told me he wanted ME to teach this book to the class so I had to read this book like I had never read any book before. Perhaps my unique connection to the book made me enjoy the book more than these other reviewers, but I think that it would still be one of my favorite books even if had not read it for class. I teach high school English and have read A LOT of books - all kinds of books, not just classics. Even if you read this and find that you can't fully understand it, that's OKAY. Part of the problem with my students is they are always looking for the AUTHOR"S interpretation or the TEACHER'S interpretation - just enjoy your own interpretation. The book is not that hard to understand, but the imagery and symbolism is deep. This is an important book, as pretty soon there will be no Native Americans left to tell our stories. Less than 1% of this nation is Native American and it's important to read these stories. The mixing of Christianity with Native traditions is particularly significant in this story. In fact, I based my Master's thesis on the themes in this work. I met Louise Erdrich a couple of years ago at a book signing and I wanted to tell her this book changed my life, but how cheesy would that be?

A story of an elusive woman(Fleur Pillager) entangled in the larger event of the Native American peoples' loss of their homeland. Erdrich is masterful in her ability to express both Fleur's human and mystical qualities through the voices of two narrators, each revealing complex lives and relationships of their own. A perspective is presented so that the new white order, who wield "this method of leading others with a pen and piece of paper", becomes a foreign way of thought(though it is of course our modern Western way), which consumes the Native American culture as fast as it wipes the trees from its landscape.

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.

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.