Louise Erdrich Books in Order

An early educational title written by Erdrich, created primarily for the school market. This work predates her major novels and serves as a textbook reader designed to help children develop language and creative skills.

Erdrich’s debut collection of poetry, exploring the same rugged landscapes and mixed-blood heritage that define her fiction. These poems delve into the tension between the hunter and the hunted, the domestic and the wild, and the spiritual borders of the midwestern woods.

The novel that launched Erdrich’s career, weaving together the lives of the Kashpaw and Lamartine families on a North Dakota reservation. Through a series of fractured, powerful narratives, it explores the bonds of blood, the scars of history, and the enduring pull of home.

Set in the town of Argus, North Dakota, this novel spans forty years and focuses on the lives of Mary and Karl Adare, siblings abandoned by their mother at a fairground. It is a story of survival and eccentricity, highlighting the strange, durable connections formed by outcasts.

Set in the early 20th century, this novel alternates between two narrators: the elder Nanapush, who fights to save his tribe’s land, and Pauline Puyat, a mixed-blood girl consumed by a pious madness. At the center is Fleur Pillager, a woman of fierce power who refuses to be tamed.

A collection of poetry that blends Catholic iconography with Ojibwe myth. Erdrich writes with intense lyricism about motherhood, spiritual hunger, and the fiery, transformative nature of love and desire.

Selected by New Woman magazine, this anthology brings together short fiction from a range of established writers, including contributors such as Anne Tyler, Louise Erdrich, and Penny Vincenzi. The collection presents varied standalone stories rather than a single connected narrative.

A limited-edition collection of travel essays and sketches co-authored with Michael Dorris. These pieces offer intimate observations of the American landscape and life on the road, capturing the couple's shared perspective on place and journey.

Co-written with Michael Dorris, this intellectual thriller follows a pair of academics who discover a lost diary of Christopher Columbus. Their research turns into a high-stakes adventure that takes them from the halls of Dartmouth to the Caribbean.

Beverly Lawn’s anthology presents thirty influential short stories by writers from Hawthorne and Poe to Borges and García Márquez. Designed as a broad survey of the form, it pairs canonical American and international works across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Edited by Bill Adler, Ines Hernandez, and Patricia Riley, this anthology brings together short stories, novel excerpts, memoir, and autobiographical writing from Native writers in the United States and Canada. The selections explore childhood, cultural identity, family, hardship, humor, and healing.

Guest editor Louise Erdrich and Katrina Kenison select twenty short stories first published in U.S. and Canadian magazines. The annual anthology ranges from established writers such as John Updike and Alice Munro to distinctive contemporary voices.

Alison Lurie’s anthology traces modern fairy tales from the nineteenth century to the present. Its selections by writers including Dickens, Hawthorne, Angela Carter, James Thurber, and Louise Erdrich rework the genre’s magic, satire, moral questions, and strangeness.

A collection of interviews that offers insight into the unique literary partnership between Erdrich and Dorris. They discuss their collaborative process, the themes of their individual books, and the complexities of writing about Native American experience.

Coedited by David Craig and Janet McCann, this poetry anthology gathers contemporary work by writers of faith. Its selections present varied modern poetic approaches to religious belief and spiritual life.

Lipsha Morrissey, a young man with a hesitant healing touch, returns to the reservation and falls in love with the beautiful Shawnee Ray. He finds himself torn between traditional ways, the allure of easy money at the local bingo hall, and the spiritual legacy of his grandmother, Fleur Pillager.

Edited by Gerald Vizenor, this anthology brings together Ojibway prose from nineteenth-century writers and contemporary voices. Its selections trace a literary tradition expressed in English through historical writing, memoir, fiction, and work by Louise Erdrich.

Edited by Susan Wadia-Ells, this collection brings together firsthand accounts from birth mothers, adoptive mothers, and adopted daughters. Contributors examine adoption through experiences that include open and cross-cultural adoption, access to birth records, and adoption by lesbians.

A memoir of early motherhood, written during the first year of her daughter’s life. Erdrich meditates on the rhythms of nature, the discipline of writing, and the intense, exhausting joy of caring for a newborn.

A children’s book about a grandmother who abruptly departs on a porpoise, leaving behind a collection of mysterious eggs. When the eggs hatch into passenger pigeons—a species thought extinct—her family is led on a wild adventure.

Trapped in a blizzard, four women realize they all share the same ex-husband, Jack Mauser. As the storm rages, they take turns telling the stories of their marriages, revealing a man who is part trickster, part tragedy, and the unlikely link between their lives.

A revised and expanded version of *The Antelope Wife*, this novel is set in Minneapolis and explores the urban Ojibwe experience. It tells the story of Klaus Shawano, who is bewitched by a woman he meets at a powwow, triggering a saga of obsession and ancient family patterns.

This anthology assembles twenty-five macabre tales by women writers, crossing horror and darkly unsettling literary fiction. The selections include Louise Erdrich’s “Fleur” alongside work by Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter, Daphne du Maurier, and other authors.

Edited by Jim Elledge and Susan Swartwout, this volume collects more than 150 poems by over 130 American poets. It explores popular culture as poetic material while representing the country’s cultural diversity.

The first book in the award-winning series, introducing Omakayas, a young Ojibwe girl living on an island in Lake Superior in 1847. As her family prepares for winter, they face the arrival of a devastating smallpox epidemic that tests their strength and survival.

Edited by Lex Williford and Michael Martone, this anthology presents fifty North American short stories written since 1970. Drawn from recommendations by more than five hundred professors, fiction writers, and novelists, the selections emphasize stylistic and cultural breadth.

Coedited by Paula J. Carlson and Peter S. Hawkins, this reader uses selected American literature to support small-group exploration of Christian faith. Readings by writers including Louise Erdrich, John Cheever, and Tillie Olsen invite discussion of discipleship and theology.

For decades, Father Damien has served the reservation, but he harbors a profound secret: he is actually a woman named Agnes who assumed a priest’s identity years ago. As the Vatican investigates his potential sainthood, the truth of his compassionate, complicated life unravels.

Edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, this annual anthology collects fantasy and horror fiction and poetry from the preceding year. The fourteenth volume also includes year-end coverage of the field, along with Louise Erdrich’s “Le Mooz.”

Edited by John Darnton, this volume gathers essays from The New York Times’s “Writers on Writing” series. Established authors reflect on the creative and practical work of writing, reading, literary influences, and the relationship between art and lived experience.

A picture book that reminisces about the warmth and comfort of a wood-burning stove in a drafty house. Through the eyes of a young girl, the stove becomes a portal to imagination, transforming the dark Dakota winter into landscapes of fire and story.

A travel memoir in which Erdrich visits the sacred lakes and islands of her ancestors in southern Ontario and Minnesota. Part history, part personal journey, it reflects on rock paintings, books, and the spirit of the water.

A poetry collection that moves from the personal to the mythical. Erdrich writes about the daily realities of work and family, but also invokes the 'original fire' of spirit and ancestry, blending English with Ojibwe phrases.

After World War I, Fidelis Waldvogel, a German butcher and sniper, immigrates to North Dakota with his family. There, he establishes a singing club and becomes entangled with Delphine Watzka, a circus performer, in a story about the immigrant experience and the shadows of war.

This anthology brings together reflections by contemporary Indigenous women on community, ceremony, identity, governance, family, and resilience. Shaped by Wilma Mankiller, it presents personal perspectives and life strategies rooted in Native women’s experiences; Louise Erdrich contributed a foreword to the memorial edition.

Seeking revenge on the timber baron who stripped her land, Fleur Pillager travels to the city to take his life but ends up taking his heart instead. A direct sequel to *Tracks*, it explores the unintended consequences of vengeance and the complex nature of healing.

Edited by Wendy Martin, this anthology gathers twenty-four short stories by North American women written from 1972 to 2002. It ranges across writers including Toni Cade Bambara, Margaret Atwood, Sandra Cisneros, Alice Munro, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Louise Erdrich, whose contribution is “The Shawl.”

Edited by Lucy Rosenthal, this anthology presents short stories arranged by storytelling mode, showing how memoir, letters, fables, reports, and other forms can shape fiction. Introductory context and author notes accompany selections, including Erdrich’s “The Shawl.”

In this sequel to *The Birchbark House*, Omakayas and her people face a new threat: government orders to leave their island home. The children play a game of silence to overhear the adults' worried councils, capturing the tension of a community on the brink of displacement.

Faye Travers, an estate appraiser, finds a powerful ceremonial drum hidden in a New Hampshire attic. Impulsively, she steals it, setting off a chain of events that reconnects the drum to its origins on the reservation and the tragic history of the children it was made to mourn.

Edited by David Remnick, this New Yorker anthology collects essays, fiction, poems, humor, and cartoons about food and drink. Its varied selections move from restaurants, cooking, and culinary memory to wine, dieting, and appetite, including Louise Erdrich’s story “The Butcher’s Wife.”

Edited and introduced by Richard Ford, this wide-ranging anthology presents stories by more than forty American writers, pairing established figures with later generations of short-fiction voices. Louise Erdrich is represented by “The Plague of Doves,” alongside work by writers including Jhumpa Lahiri, Junot Díaz, and ZZ Packer.

A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, this novel revolves around the unsolved murder of a farm family in 1911. Decades later, the descendants of both the victims and the accused are still bound together by the secrets and blood of that violent night.

Omakayas and her family leave their beloved island and travel west, facing a harsh and hungry winter. After a comical but dangerous accident involving a porcupine, the family must rely on their wits and one another to survive the journey to a new home.

Edited by Michael Martone, this collection assembles unconventional short fiction connected to the Midwest. The stories challenge the region’s supposedly ordinary image through inventive, odd, comic, and unsettling approaches, with contributions from Louise Erdrich, George Saunders, Robert Coover, and many others.

A comprehensive collection of Erdrich’s short fiction, gathering three decades of stories. It features familiar characters from her novels alongside new voices, showcasing her mastery of the short form and her ability to distill entire lives into a few pages.

Irene America keeps two diaries: one she lets her husband read, and a secret one where she records the truth of their failing marriage. A tense, psychological drama about control, doubling, and the way couples edit their shared reality.

This Summer 2011 issue of Granta examines how feminism continues to shape, challenge, and complicate gendered power relations around the world. Its mix of fiction, essays, poetry, and other writing includes Louise Erdrich’s story “The Ojibwe Week.”

A standalone story about a woman named Linda who, abandoned at birth due to a physical deformity, is raised by a Native American nurse. As an adult, she is unexpectedly contacted by her birth parents, forcing a confrontation with the people who cast her aside.

Moving to the next generation of the Birchbark family, this story follows Omakayas’s twin grandsons. When the quiet, nature-loving Chickadee is kidnapped, he must embark on a daring journey to reunite with his brother and find his own strength.

After his mother is brutally attacked on the reservation, thirteen-year-old Joe Coutts sets out to find the perpetrator when the legal system fails her. A gripping coming-of-age story and a legal thriller that exposes the tangled jurisdiction of tribal law.

After accidentally shooting his neighbor’s son while hunting, Landreaux Iron follows an ancient tradition and gives his own young son, LaRose, to the grieving parents to raise. The novel explores the complex, painful, and ultimately redemptive bond that forms between the two families.

The sequel to *Chickadee* focuses on the other twin, Makoons, who foresees dark challenges for his family as they settle on the Great Plains. It is a story about the end of an era, as the buffalo herds diminish and the settler world closes in.

In a dystopian future where evolution has begun to reverse, a pregnant woman named Cedar Hawk Songmaker tries to navigate a society that has become increasingly dangerous for mothers. She travels to her birth family on the reservation, seeking safety as the world unravels.

Edited by Natalie Diaz, this anthology brings together poems, essays, and stories that reconsider sport through the body, power, nationalism, race, and violence. Featuring Louise Erdrich and other contemporary writers, it questions the systems and assumptions that shape athletic competition and spectatorship.

Edited by Michael Waters and Harold Schechter, this poetry anthology surveys a century of poems inspired by cinema. More than one hundred poets write about moviegoing, stars, directors, genres, and individual films, with Louise Erdrich contributing a poem about John Wayne.

This issue of Freeman’s turns to love in its romantic, familial, forbidden, and grief-shaped forms. It combines fiction, poetry, and nonfiction by writers including Richard Russo and Louise Erdrich, pairing established literary voices with newer international contributors.

Based on the life of Erdrich’s grandfather, this Pulitzer Prize winner follows a tribal chairman in the 1950s fighting a congressional bill that threatens to terminate his tribe’s rights. Alongside his political battle, the novel traces the journey of a young woman searching for her missing sister in the city.

Tookie, a Native woman who found solace in books while incarcerated, now works at a Minneapolis bookstore haunted by the ghost of its most annoying customer. Set against the backdrop of the pandemic and the protests following the murder of George Floyd, it is a story about ghosts, guilt, and the power of reading.

During the first weeks of COVID lockdown, tenants in a rundown Lower East Side building gather on the roof and tell stories night after night. This collaborative novel turns isolation into connection, with Celeste Ng among its many contributors.

Set in the Red River Valley during the economic crash of 2008, this novel centers on a fraught wedding and a love triangle involving a sugar beet farmer’s daughter. It examines the impact of industrial farming, climate change, and financial ruin on a tight-knit community.

This collection brings together thirteen stories written across two decades, illustrated by Aza Erdrich Abe. Moving between the everyday and the uncanny, the stories examine desire, grief, violence, family, and connections between people, animals, and the natural world.