Louise Erdrich - Co-authorship With Michael Dorris

Co-authorship With Michael Dorris

Erdrich's and Dorris’s collaboration continued through the 1980s and into the 1990s, always occupying the same fictional universe.

Tracks goes back to the early 20th century at the formation of the reservation and introduces the trickster figure of Nanapush, who owes a clear debt to Nanabozho. Erdrich’s novel most rooted in Anishinaabe culture (at least until Four Souls), Tracks shows early clashes between traditional ways and the Roman Catholic Church.

The Bingo Palace updates, yet does not resolve, various conflicts from Love Medicine. Set in the 1980s, it shows the good and bad effects of a casino and a factory on the reservation community. Finally, Tales of Burning Love finishes the story of Sister Leopolda, a recurring character from all the previous books, and introduces a new set of white people into the reservation universe.

Erdrich and Dorris wrote The Crown of Columbus, the only novel to which both put their names, and A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, credited to Dorris. Both were set off the Argus reservation. "The Crown of Columbus" has a female protagonist of mixed Native American and European ancestry, like Erdrich herself, and this background is of major importance to the book's plot.