Love Medicine (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Louise Erdrich
- First Published: 1984
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Social
- Time of Work: 1934-1984
- Setting: A North Dakota Indian reservation and nearby towns
- Genres: Long fiction, Social realism, Domestic realism, Family literature, Adventure
- Subjects: Culture, Blizzards, Family or family life, Tradition, Prisons, Twentieth century, Nature, Prostitution or prostitutes, Dreams, Poverty or poor people, Alcoholism or alcoholics, Substance abuse, Native Americans or American Indians, Storytelling, Adultery, Multiculturalism, Death or dying, Illegitimacy, Spiritualism, Lifestyles, Intermarriage, Convents or nunneries
- Locales: Chippewa Indian Reservation
Characters Discussed
Marie Lazarre Kashpaw, the wife of Nector Kashpaw. A loving and long-suffering woman, biological mother of five children and mother substitute to numerous others not her own, she is a kind of maternal ideal. She rears June and Lipsha Morrissey. Nector, when he meets her in 1934, calls her “a skinny white girl . . . pale as birch.” In her youth, she enters the Sacred Heart Convent as a means of escaping the reservation, but she later leaves. She marries and tolerates her husband’s infidelity, never giving up hope that she can have him exclusively. To...
[The entire page is 1154 words long]
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