Louise Erdrich

Deborah L. Madsen is Professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She has published more than a dozen books on various aspects of literary theory, American studies, feminism, and ethnic literature.

• 1. Louise Erdrich in Context Deborah L. Madsen; PART I: Tracks; Short introduction Deborah L. Madsen; 2. A Bowen Family Systems Reading of Tracks Allan Chavkin & Nancy Feyl Chavkin; 3. "I knew there never was another martyr like me": Pauline Puyat, Historical Trauma, and Tracks Connie A. Jacobs; 4. "To become a bureaucrat myself": History and Law in Tracks David Stirrup; PART II: The Last Report on the Miracles At Little No Horse; Short introduction Deborah L. Madsen; 5. Power and Authority in the Realms of Racial and Gender Politics: Postcolonial and Critical Race Theory in The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse Mark Shackleton; 6. "We Speak of Everything": Indigenous Traditions in The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse P. Jane Hafen; 7. Love and the Slippery Slope of Sexual Orientation: L/G/B/T/Qetc Sensibility in The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse Patrice Hollrah PART III: The Plague of Doves; Short introduction Deborah L. Madsen; 8. "It All Does Come to Nothing in the End": Nationalism and Gender in Louise Erdrich's The Plague of Doves Gina Valentino; 9. So, a Priest Walks into a Reservation Tragicomedy: Humor in The Plague of Doves John Gamber; 10. Haunted by Birds: An Eco-critical View of Personhood in Louise Erdrich's The Plague of Doves Catherine Rainwater; Works cited; Further Reading; Notes on Contributors; Index.

Deborah Madsen is one of the leading scholars of Native American literature in Europe. She has assembled a talented group of scholars to analyze three important novels by Louise Erdrich (the early Tracks and the recent Last Report and Plague of Doves). Erdrich is one of the best-known Native writers working today, and these essays, employing methodologies ranging from gender and LGBT studies to critical race theory represent an important contribution to scholarship about her. It deserves a place on the shelf of any serious scholar of contemporary Native literature.