Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country (National Geographic Directions)

by Louise Erdrich

Release Date: 01 June, 2003

Edition: Hardcover

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a travel memoir

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.

Travels with Louise

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.