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In 1953 Patrick Gourneau, tribal chairman of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, worked nights as a watchman at a jewel bearing plant and spent his days fighting a bill in Congress that would have ended his tribe’s federal recognition. His granddaughter Louise Erdrich turned his story into The Night Watchman, which won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Erdrich, born in Minnesota in 1954 and an enrolled citizen of the same tribe, had begun almost forty years earlier with Love Medicine (1984), the first of a cycle of novels about a few Ojibwe and white families in North Dakota whose lives cross from book to book. She also owns Birchbark Books, a small bookshop in Minneapolis. This guide covers her thirteen key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 13 key books · 1984–2024 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Louise Erdrich has written nineteen novels, one of them with Michael Dorris. The best known are Love Medicine (1984), The Round House (2012), which won the National Book Award, LaRose (2016) and The Night Watchman (2020), which won the Pulitzer Prize. Start with Love Medicine; many of her novels share characters, and the section on reading order below explains how they connect.
Where to Start with Louise Erdrich
If you want the root of everything else
→ Love Medicine (1984) — the book whose families run through her other novels.
If you want a single, gripping story
→ The Round House (2012) — a boy, his mother and a crime the law cannot touch.
If you want the Pulitzer winner
→ The Night Watchman (2020) — based on her grandfather’s fight in 1953.
If you want something set now
→ The Sentence (2021) — a haunted bookshop in Minneapolis, 2019–2020.
13 Louise Erdrich Books, in Order
Love Medicine
Linked stories, each told by a different voice, about the Kashpaw, Lamartine and Morrissey families on an Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota between 1934 and the mid-1980s. It opens with the death of June Kashpaw in 1981, and at its centre is the decades-long triangle of Nector Kashpaw, his wife Marie and Lulu Lamartine. Erdrich expanded it in 1993 and revised it again in 2009.
The Beet Queen
In 1932 two children, Mary and Karl Adare, are abandoned and end up in Argus, a small town off the reservation, where Mary is raised by her aunt. The novel follows them, their cousin Sita and Mary’s Ojibwe friend Celestine over forty years, to Celestine’s daughter Dot being crowned queen of the sugar-beet festival. It is the one novel of the early cycle centred on the white and German-American families of Argus.
Tracks
The earliest story in the cycle: the years when disease and land sales broke up the reservation. Two narrators take turns, the elder Nanapush and Pauline Puyat, and both are drawn to Fleur Pillager, a young woman who survives drowning twice and whom the town both fears and needs. Eli Kashpaw, whose family runs through Love Medicine, is one of the young generation here.
The Bingo Palace
A sequel to Love Medicine set in the 1990s. Lipsha Morrissey, June’s son, comes home and falls for Shawnee Ray Toose, who is also courted by his uncle Lyman Lamartine, a businessman planning a casino on the reservation’s land. Fleur Pillager from Tracks is still alive at the edge of the story.
The Antelope Wife
A separate world from the North Dakota books: several generations of two Ojibwe families in Minneapolis, whose stories reach back to a raid by the US cavalry on an Ojibwe village in the nineteenth century, and forward to a wedding that goes wrong. It mixes realism with myth and talking dogs, and won the 1999 World Fantasy Award for best novel. Erdrich rewrote it as Antelope Woman in 2016.
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse
Agnes DeWitt, a former nun, takes the identity of a drowned priest, Father Damien Modeste, and serves the reservation of Little No Horse as its priest for more than half a century. Near the end of his life a Vatican envoy arrives to investigate whether Sister Leopolda, who once tormented Marie in Love Medicine, should be made a saint. It was a finalist for the National Book Award.
The Master Butchers Singing Club
Fidelis Waldvogel, a German who was a sniper in the First World War, comes to America with a suitcase of sausages, settles in Argus, opens a butcher’s shop and starts a men’s singing club. The other main character is Delphine Watzka, a local woman who works in the shop. Erdrich drew on her German-American father’s side of the family.
The Plague of Doves
In 1911 a white farm family is murdered near the town of Pluto, North Dakota, and a mob lynches Native men who had nothing to do with it. Several narrators, among them a girl, Evelina Harp, and the tribal judge Antone Bazil Coutts, trace how that crime still binds the families of the town and the reservation decades later. It was a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize and opens what critics call her justice trilogy.
The Round House
In 1988 thirteen-year-old Joe Coutts’s mother, Geraldine, is raped near the round house, a ceremonial building on the reservation, and withdraws into silence. Because no one can establish whether the crime happened on tribal, state or federal land, his father, a tribal judge, cannot touch the white attacker, and Joe and his friends set out to find justice themselves. It won the 2012 National Book Award for Fiction.
LaRose
Hunting a deer, Landreaux Iron accidentally kills his neighbour’s young son, Dusty. Following an old custom, he and his wife give their own son, LaRose, to the grieving family. The novel follows the two families and the earlier LaRoses in their line, back to the boarding schools. It won the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award and completes the justice trilogy.
The Night Watchman
In 1953 Congress proposes to terminate the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. Thomas Wazhashk, night watchman at the reservation’s jewel bearing plant and a tribal leader, organises the fight against the bill, while his niece Patrice Paranteau goes to Minneapolis to look for her missing sister Vera. Thomas is based on Erdrich’s grandfather, Patrick Gourneau. It won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
The Sentence
Tookie, an Ojibwe woman who served ten years in prison for a botched theft of a corpse, works at Birchbark Books, Erdrich’s real shop in Minneapolis. From November 2019 the ghost of Flora, a difficult customer who has just died, haunts the store, through the first months of the pandemic and the protests after the murder of George Floyd. Erdrich appears in it briefly as herself.
The Mighty Red
A small town in the Red River Valley of North Dakota around the 2008 financial crash, where the economy runs on sugar beet. Kismet Poe, a teenager, is caught between Gary Geist, the heir to two beet farms, and Hugo, a homeschooled boy who works in his mother’s bookshop, while her mother Crystal copes with a husband who vanished with a church investment fund.
In What Order to Read Louise Erdrich
Erdrich has said she is writing “one long book in which the main chapters are also books”. Most of her novels are set on, or near, the same fictional Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota and the white town of Argus beside it, and the same families recur: Kashpaw, Lamartine, Nanapush, Pillager, Morrissey. Every book stands alone, but characters met as old people in one turn up young in another.
Read in publication order, the early cycle begins with Love Medicine (1934–1980s), then The Beet Queen (Argus, from 1932), then Tracks, which goes back to 1912–1924 and is the earliest story chronologically, then The Bingo Palace, which continues Love Medicine into the 1990s. Tales of Burning Love (1996) and Four Souls (2004, Fleur Pillager after Tracks) fill in more of the same families, and The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse tells the reservation’s history through its priest. If you want the story in time order, start with Tracks.
The Plague of Doves, The Round House and LaRose form a second, looser group, the justice trilogy, set on the same reservation and sharing the Coutts family; read them in that order. The Antelope Wife, The Night Watchman, The Sentence and The Mighty Red stand outside both groups.
A reading path
1. Love Medicine (1984)
2. Tracks (1988)
3. The Round House (2012)
4. The Night Watchman (2020)
5. The Sentence (2021)
Everything Else Louise Erdrich Published
Beyond the 13 key books: 14 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Other novels
6
6 books · 1991–2017
- 1991The Crown of Columbuswritten with Michael Dorris
- 1996Tales of Burning Lovethe five wives of Jack Mauser, one of them June Kashpaw
- 2004Four SoulsFleur Pillager’s story after Tracks
- 2005The Painted Druman Ojibwe drum and the families who owned it
- 2010Shadow Taga marriage coming apart through the wife’s diaries
- 2017Future Home of the Living Goda pregnant Ojibwe woman as evolution runs backwards
Short stories
1
1 book · 2009
- 2009The Red Convertiblecollected and new stories, 1978–2008
Poetry
3
3 books · 1984–2003
- 1984Jacklighther first book of poems
- 1989Baptism of Desirepoems
- 2003Original Fireselected and new poems
Nonfiction
3
3 books · 1990–2003
- 1990Route Twotravel writing with Michael Dorris
- 1995The Blue Jay’s Dancea memoir of a year of pregnancy and her daughter’s first months
- 2003Books and Islands in Ojibwe Countrya journey with her baby daughter to the lakes and islands of southern Ontario
For children
1
1 book · 1999
- 1999The Birchbark Housefirst of five novels about an Ojibwe girl, Omakayas, and her family in the 1840s, followed by The Game of Silence, The Porcupine Year, Chickadee and Makoons
The years · 1954–2021
Quick facts about Louise Erdrich
- Known for
- A cycle of novels about intertwined Ojibwe and white families in North Dakota, told in many voices over more than a century
- 1954
- Born in Little Falls, Minnesota
- 1984
- Love Medicine
- 2000
- Opens Birchbark Books in Minneapolis
- 2012
- National Book Award for The Round House
- 2021
- Pulitzer Prize for The Night Watchman
- Born
- 7 June 1954, Little Falls, Minnesota; grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota, where her parents taught at a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school
- Tribe
- Enrolled citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians
- Education
- Dartmouth College (BA, 1976); Johns Hopkins University (MA, 1979)
- Bookshop
- Owns Birchbark Books, Minneapolis, specialising in Native books and art
- Prizes
- National Book Critics Circle Award (1984, 2016); National Book Award (2012); Pulitzer Prize (2021)
- Honours
- Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction (2015); Gish Prize (2026)
The red mark is 1984: Love Medicine, the first book of the North Dakota cycle, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Watch
Louise Erdrich on The Round House
In October 2012 Erdrich talks to Jeffrey Brown of PBS NewsHour about The Round House and the gaps in tribal, state and federal law that the novel is built around.
How Louise Erdrich Writes: Many Voices, One Place
Erdrich rarely tells a story through one person. Love Medicine is built of chapters narrated by different family members, several of which began as separate short stories, and some events are told twice from opposite sides. In Tracks the two narrators, Nanapush and Pauline, contradict each other about Fleur, and the reader has to choose.
Her material is the history of the Ojibwe in the twentieth century, told through ordinary families: the loss of land to taxes and lumber companies, boarding schools, the 1950s policy of termination, the legal gap that leaves crimes by outsiders on reservations unpunished, which is the subject of The Round House. She writes it with humour, sex and the supernatural mixed in; the dead and the living talk to each other in many of her books.
She revises published books more than most novelists: Love Medicine exists in three versions, and The Antelope Wife was rewritten as Antelope Woman. Her own family runs through the work too, from her German-American father’s side in The Master Butchers Singing Club to her grandfather in The Night Watchman and her bookshop in The Sentence.
Frequently asked questions about Louise Erdrich’s books
How many books has Louise Erdrich written?
More than thirty: eighteen novels of her own and one written with Michael Dorris, two story collections, three books of poetry, three of nonfiction and seven books for children. The 13 key books on this page run from Love Medicine (1984) to The Mighty Red (2024).
What are Louise Erdrich’s books in order?
The key novels are Love Medicine (1984), The Beet Queen (1986), Tracks (1988), The Bingo Palace (1994), The Antelope Wife (1998), The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (2001), The Master Butchers Singing Club (2003), The Plague of Doves (2008), The Round House (2012), LaRose (2016), The Night Watchman (2020), The Sentence (2021) and The Mighty Red (2024).
Where should I start with Louise Erdrich?
With Love Medicine, because so many of her later characters first appear there. If you would rather start with a single, tightly plotted story, read The Round House.
What is Louise Erdrich’s most famous book?
Love Medicine (1984), her first novel, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her most decorated recent books are The Round House (National Book Award, 2012) and The Night Watchman (Pulitzer Prize, 2021).
Do you need to read the Love Medicine books in order?
No. Each book stands alone, but reading them in publication order, Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, Tracks, The Bingo Palace, then Tales of Burning Love and Four Souls, lets you recognise the families as they return. Tracks is the earliest in time, set from 1912 to 1924.
What is the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Louise Erdrich?
The Night Watchman (2020), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2021. It is based on her grandfather, Patrick Gourneau, who fought the 1953 bill to terminate the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. The Plague of Doves was a Pulitzer finalist in 2009.
Does Louise Erdrich own a bookstore?
Yes. She opened Birchbark Books in the Kenwood area of Minneapolis in 2000. It specialises in books by Native authors, including Dakota and Ojibwe language materials, and sells Native art. It is the setting of her novel The Sentence.
What is the justice trilogy?
The name critics give to The Plague of Doves (2008), The Round House (2012) and LaRose (2016). All three are set on the same North Dakota reservation and deal with crimes and how the law fails to answer them; the Coutts family links the first two.
Did Michael Dorris co-write Louise Erdrich’s books?
They worked closely together while married, from 1981 until they separated in 1995, and she planned Love Medicine with him. Two books carry both names: the travel book Route Two (1990) and the novel The Crown of Columbus (1991).
Is Louise Erdrich still alive?
Yes. She was born on 7 June 1954 and lives in Minneapolis.
Footnotes
- Louise Erdrich — Wikipedia
- Louise Erdrich bibliography — Wikipedia
- The Round House (novel) — Wikipedia
- Love Medicine — NEA Big Read Reader Resources
- The Night Watchman review — The Boston Globe, 2020
- Louise Erdrich — The Pulitzer Prizes
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“People just sit and the stories start coming, one after another.”
— Louise Erdrich, interview in Writer’s Digest (1991)
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