This is it.. Final Love Medicine!

It’s funny how I never seem to enjoy the second half of this sort of book as much as I enjoy the first half. This is true of most generational books I’ve read. I always like the first half better. Keeping with tradition, I liked the first half of this book better as well. That’s not to say that I didn’t like the second bit- no, no, no. I did. Just not as well. I think it is because I prefer the past to the present in real life too, but that’s a story worthy of a blog all its own.

Last week’s reading introduced us to the Kashpaw family and many of those who are connected to them. It spans the years from 1934 to 1957. The chapter located in the middle of the book is titled “A Bridge” and it serves as the bridge between the two generations, linking them smoothly and moving the reader into the more recent past. Fast forward 26 years and we find ourselves on a bus with Nector and Marie’s granddaughter Albertine. She has run away from the reservation, presumably for the same reasons so many other teens run away- the promise of opportunity offered in the ‘big city’. Albertine doesn’t find that, but she does find Howard Lamartine. He is home from Vietnam and is emotionally scarred by the experiences he had there. “Returning home he had been fouled up in red tape, routinely questioned by a military psychiatrist, dismissed. It had been three weeks, only that, since the big C-141 and Gia Lam Airfield” (Erdrich 171). The two are drawn together and, after many drinks together and finding that they share a history of sorts, the two end up in a seedy motel room where Albertine hides in the bathroom and Howard has the first of what can be assumed will be many flashbacks (180).

The generations are connected, the bridge is crossed. Erdrich moves on to the next phase of her story where the reader can see how the choices made by the elder generation are affecting the younger generation.

At this point, the story changes. Things have not really changed on the reservation. The younger generation drinks too much. The men carry a sense of hopelessness and some have ended up in jail. The outlook is bleak. Howard Lamartine is unable to cope with his return to normalcy and kills himself in front of his younger half brother (and son of Nector) Lyman. Albertine goes to work for a construction company and gets to know Gerry Nanapush, one of Lulu’s sons, lover of June, father of Lipsha, and full time Jailbird. What a mouthful.

Wait- there’s more!

Gordie, June’s husband drinks himself to death. Nector suffers from dementia and chokes to death on a turkey heart, Lulu is bald, having lost her hair in a fire set by Nector years earlier. King, Lynette and King Jr. (who prefers to be called Howard) live in the Twin Cities. Marie, no longer needing to care for Nector, has bonded with Lulu and the two of them become politically active in the affairs of the tribe.

But what does all this have to do with anything? Does this mean that the next generation must fail as the first generation seems to have done? Will they learn from the mistakes of their elders? Some will, some won’t.

King will continue on as a drunk and a do-nothing. But at the age of 4, his son is seeing that this is not the way life should be. In Kindergarten, King Jr. begins to distance himself from his father by taking the name Howard rather than being called King. Smart kid.

Lipsha, who is on the run because of a broken contract with the army, will go home and be pronounced unfit for duty (heart problems, though presumably not life-threatening) (336-337). He is intelligent and kind. Who knows how far he can go.

Most impressive to me is Lyman, Lulu and Nector’s son. After failing miserably at the ‘Tomahawk Factory’ he turns to a new idea… Bingo.

“They gave you worthless land to start with and then they chopped it out from under your feet. They took your kids away and stuffed the English language in their mouth. They sent your brother to hell, they shipped him back fried. They sold you booze for furs and then told you not to drink. It was time, high past time the Indians smarten up and started using the only leverage they had—federal law. Lyman grinned to himself, his eyebrows raised, staring at the floor. He saw farther, built bigger, until the vision was raised and solid in the dusky air. Bingo! Bingo!” (326)

Ah hah, I thought. So this is where it starts.

Lyman goes on. “He’d start his own training program, get his staff right out of high school, teach Chippewas the right ways, the proper ways, the polite ways, to take money from retired white people who had farmed Indian hunting grounds, worked Indian jobs, lived high while their neighbors lived low, looked down or never noticed who was starving, who was lost” (326).

The book is a generational tale, yes. It is the story of making mistakes and of learning from those mistakes or of continuing the trend. It is the story of taking what you’ve been given and doing something good with it, something worthwhile and meaningful. While gambling may not be considered meaningful to some, to the Native Americans it has been a way out of the incredible poverty and prejudice they have lived with for hundreds of years.

Ok, so maybe that wasn’t the point Erdrich was trying to make in her story, but it was just one of the many thoughts I had as I finished the book. An Erdrich presents possibility instead of dead-ends. Choice instead of hopelessness. Order instead of chaos.

Is there a lesson in that for all of us? I like to think so.