Louise Erdrich - Later Works

Later Works

Erdrich’s first novel after her divorce, The Antelope Wife, was the first to be set outside the continuity of the previous books. She subsequently returned to the reservation and nearby towns, and has published five novels since 1998 dealing with events in that fictional area. Among these are The Master Butchers Singing Club, a macabre mystery that again draws on Erdrich's Native American and German-American heritage, and The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse. Both have geographic and character connections with The Beet Queen.

Together with several of her previous works, these have drawn comparisons with William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha novels. Erdrich's successive novels created multiple narratives in the same fictional area and combined the tapestry of local history with current themes and modern consciousness.

In The Plague of Doves, Erdrich continued the multi-ethnic dimension of her writing, weaving together the layered relationships among residents of farms, towns, and reservations; their shared histories, secrets, relationships, and antipathies; and the complexities for later generations of re-imagining their ancestors' overlapping pasts. The Plague of Doves was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2009.

Erdrich's 2010 novel, Shadow Tag, is a chilling tale of a failing marriage between Irene and Gil, two Native Americans of differing tribal backgrounds, whose artistic and family life deteriorate into ennui, deceit, and abuse, all of which are attributed to the overbearing, potentially sociopathic tendencies of a domineering, abusive husband. Nevertheless, the couple can live neither with nor without each other.