Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country (National Geographic Directions) [Hardcover]

Louise Erdrich (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0792257197 | ISBN-13: 978-0792257196

For more than twenty years Louise Erdrich has dazzled readers with the intricately wrought, deeply poetic novels which have won her a place among today's finest writers. Her nonfiction is equally eloquent, and this lovely memoir offers a vivid glimpse of the landscape, the people, and the long tradition of storytelling that give her work its magical, elemental force.

In a small boat like those her Native American ancestors have used for countless generations, she travels to Ojibwe home ground, the islands of Lake of the Woods in southern Ontario. Her only companions are her new baby and the baby's father, an Ojibwe spiritual leader, on a pilgrimage to the sacred rock paintings their people have venerated for centuries as mystical "teaching and dream guides," and where even today Ojibwe leave offerings of tobacco in token of their power. With these paintings as backdrop, Erdrich summons to life the Ojibwe's spirits and songs, their language and sorrows, and the tales that are in their blood, echoing through her own family's very contemporary American lives and shaping her vision of the wider world. Thoughtful, moving, and wonderfully well observed, her meditation evokes ancient wisdom, modern ways, and the universal human concerns we all share.

"This book is a treasure and a delight."—Minneapolis Star Tribune


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Louise Erdrich puts the reader in the passenger’s seat on a journey that is equal parts memoir, history, and mythology in Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country. She travels to Southern Ontario and Minnesota’s Lake of the Woods and Rainy Lake to learn about the land, her tribe, and the stories left behind. Whether by car, by boat, or on foot, Erdrich finds her highly personal expedition enveloped by stories found in books, songs and rock paintings of her Ojibwe ancestors, the islands, and even water: "You could think of the lakes as libraries," she notes.

Erdrich expertly weaves the oral traditions of her ancestors into the account of her trip, integrating Ojibwe rituals and language. Her odyssey offers numerous history lessons unheard of in American textbooks. Erdrich, perhaps best known for her novel Love Medicine, once again reveals territory unfamiliar to--and untouched by--most of the outside world. One of Erdrich's last stops is on an island estate that belonged to explorer Ernest Oberholtzer, a friend of the Ojibwes. Ober’s island, as Erdrich calls it, is home to more than 11,000 books. Erdrich delights in her surroundings, but admits she is in "somewhat uneasy agreement with the spirit of the island, which is to let the books exist as they were meant to exist, to be read, to be found and then unfound. To have their own life." It is a striking analogy to the American West and its Native people. Ultimately, Erdrich concludes that books should be preserved--and share! d. It is their presence that ensures she will find comfort and companionship. --C.J. Carrillo

From Booklist

Fans of Erdrich's best-selling fiction will recognize her signature combination of the sacred and the ordinary in this lively traveler's memoir, and many will enjoy the rare glimpse of her personal life as well as the physical facts of her journey from her home in Minneapolis to the lakes and islands of her Ojibwe ancestors in Ontario and Minnesota. At 47, she's nursing her 18-month-old daughter, whose father, a spiritual leader, grew up in a time before the Ojibwe were removed from the islands. Erdrich reads stories everywhere, in the centuries-old rock art, in the astonishing old island library that she's helping to preserve on Rainy Lake, and then, on her return home, in the cozy bookstore she owns in Minneapolis. It's a winning combination of city (she's grateful to reach her teenage daughters on her cell-phone), history, and wilderness. Like a chant through the book is her repeated question, "Books. Why?" She finds all kinds of answers, irreverent and wise, but she ends with the elemental: "So that I will never be alone." Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: National Geographic (June 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0792257197
• ISBN-13: 978-0792257196
• Product Dimensions: 5.6 x 0.8 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #552,142 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Louise Erdrich is the author of twelve novels as well as volumes of poetry, children's books, and a memoir of early motherhood. Her debut novel, Love Medicine, won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent novel, The Plague of Doves, a New York Times bestseller, received the highest praise from Philip Roth, who wrote, "Louise Erdrich's imaginative freedom has reached its zenith--The Plague of Doves is her dazzling masterpiece." Louise Erdrich lives in Minnesota with her daughters and is the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Travels with Louise, June 17, 2003

By 

Ron Franscell, Author of 'Sourtoe Cocktail Club' - See all my reviews

This review is from: Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country (National Geographic Directions) (Hardcover)

In her novels, Louise Erdrich has never strayed far from the northern plains of her youth, nor the interior landscape of a woman straddling the border of two cultures.

And she doesn't stray far in "Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country," her deeply personal, non-fiction reflection on the land and lore of some of her indigenous ancestors.

Part travelogue and part memoir, Erdrich takes her infant daughter by small boat to Lake of the Woods in southern Ontario to visit powerful, centuries-old rock paintings still read by contemporary Ojibwe as "teaching and dream guides." She sees these cultural artifacts, like books, as intimate art and communications that transcend centuries.

But this trek among the myths and spirits of an ancient culture begins and ends -- and sometimes pauses along the way -- in the contemporary life of one of America's most superb storytellers. It explores the edges of the sometimes-treacherous zones in Erdrich's personal landscape: Family, love and children.

"Books and Islands" is the latest title in National Geographic's Directions series, travel memoirs by some of the world's most highly regarded literary figures, including David Mamet's "South of the Northeast Kingdom," and John Edgar Wideman's recent "The Island: Martinique."

Fans of Erdrich's earlier fiction, such as "Love Medicine" or "The Master Butchers Singing Club," will glimpse the very foundation of her literary vision in this small, easily read volume, which also includes several original drawings by Erdrich.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a travel memoir, August 15, 2003

By 

Joe Sherry (Minnesota) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country (National Geographic Directions) (Hardcover)

Normally, I would not read a travel memoir, or actually any travel writing. I decided to give this book a chance because Louise Erdrich is my favorite author and I'll read anything she writes. I had no idea what to expect from this book. I knew that it was a travel memoir of Erdrich's trip to Rainy Island at Lake of the Woods.

Rainy Island once belonged to explorer Ernest Oberholtzer. Ober, as Erdrich refers to him, was a book collector (among other things). The Island has many cabins that are just filled with books. Since Louise Erdrich is Ojibwe, an author, and a bookseller, this is the type of journey that fits right into her life. We begin the book as she is just arriving up in Northern Minnesota and Erdrich is meeting up with the father of her youngest daughter. Erdrich writes about the Ojibwe, this man's place in the culture (he is a spiritual leader), her daughter, the Ojibwe language, and why she is making this trip.

I might expect a travel memoir to focus completely on the journey, but Erdrich deviates from this and talks about everything that influences the trip and the history of the northern Ojibwe and the islands. Erdrich writes about the oral traditions of the Ojibwe and weaves the story of her trip into the narrative.

On one hand this is a fascinating journey, but a warning to the reader: this is not like her fiction. This is a slow moving history of Edrich's trip to Rainy Island and a history of the Ojibwe from the Lake of the Woods. This is an interesting book, but it might not be for everyone.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country, September 22, 2004

By 

K Scheffler (Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country (National Geographic Directions) (Hardcover)

Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country documents Erdrich's journey to the Lake of the Woods region on the Ontario/Minnesota border, the traditional home of some of her ancestors. For the most part, I found the book enlightening, and although at first somewhat flustered by the author's style, soon was drawn into her story. The author seemed to me to be quite sincere about her intents and although only part Ojibwe on her mother's side, I felt that she had much appreciation for this heriatge. I feel, therefore, that D. Sander's review is quite harsh and seemingly motivated by other unspecified factors, and is not an accurate assessment of what the reader will derive from this book.