This volume of new essays provides the first book-length critical assessment of the fiction of America's best-known contemporary writer of Native American heritage.Louise Erdrich is arguably the most prolific and prominent contemporary writer of American Indian descent in North America today. Her novels and short stories have won great critical acclaim and are widely taught in American and world literature courses.This collection of original ssays focuses on Erdrich's writings rooted in the Chippewa experience. Premier scholars of Native American literature investigate narrative structure, signs of ethnicity, the notions of luck and chance in Erdrich's narrative cosmology, her use of hunting metaphors, her efforts to counter stereotypes of American Indian women, her use of comedy in exploring American Indians' tragic past, her intentions underlying the process of revision in Love Medicine, and other subjects.Including a variety of theoretical approaches, this book provides a comprehensive examination of Erdrich's work, making it more accessible to new readers and richer to those already familiar with her work.