Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich
*Note: Contrary to what the picture indicates, clicking to look inside will not take you there after all. I believe you'd have to go through Amazon to do that.
My, this book has been on my reading list for years. And to think, I did not like it at first. I was begrudged to buy it ($14 was a scandalous sum for a book) for the freshman reading list for Honors English I in high school. High school. They had us reading textbooks and suddenly we were reading Jane Eyre and this novel, though it's funny, I actually liked Jane Eyre. This book, this book however revolted me. Its themes surround Native American Indians, and that was interesting, but I found the people in it immoral. A prostitute, a drunkard, a cheating husband, several suicides. Fourteen-year-olds do not have that sort of depth, I should like to think. But the more I trudged through advanced placement English (don't think I'm gussying myself up--English was my worst subject aside from gym), the more I found literature wanted to rob us of innocence. I personally think that contributes to emo teenagers, among other things.
So fast forward a few years during a spring cleaning raid, when I found this book in the back of my shelves, aging nicely in its paperbacking because nobody had really touched it. What a waste, I was thinking, taking it out, reading a few lines. And from there I was hooked. Erdrich writes with a sort of nostalgic, melancholy cadence, rounding her characters out nicely. Beyond the endless metaphors, it is a well-written piece that provokes, repels, and laments its central families' tragedies. But its purpose, I think, is quite hopeful. Her characters are relatable because their mistakes are very human.
John and Wanda's fight was inspired by this book. The first-person accounts of Todd and Lance also take root from her storytelling. So yes, I keep it handy when I'm caught in a writing funk, its prose rampant with love, lust, hatred, forgiveness, and death. Which is kind-of the Legend story too, come to think of it.
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