“Erdrich is a poet of lists, placing like and unlike together as if they were a series of Christmas lights, each individually illuminating, each gaining luster and brilliance from its placement, the whole blazing, incandescent.”  —The New York Times 

Over the course of her four decades, author Louise Erdrich has thrilled critics and readers alike with her expert, compassionate portraits of Native American life. In June 2021, Erdrich was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for The Night Watchman, a novel, based on her grandfather’s life, that traces the experiences of a Chippewa Council night watchman in mid-19th-century rural North Dakota who fights Congress to enforce Native American treaty rights.

Although Erdrich is best known for her novels, she has also published short stories, poetry, nonfiction, and children’s books. Explore some of our favorite of her lesser-known works.

Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country (2003)
We love this memoir so much, we had to put it first on the list. Explore Erdrich’s own home country, from the Ojibwe lands where she grew up to her bookstore in Minneapolis, and get a sense of her passion for books, her embrace of the natural world, and the Ojibwe people who populate her fiction.

The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (2001)
This novel—set in classic Erdrich territory, an Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota—has two secret weapons: Nanapush and Father Damien. Read it just to meet them.  

The Birchbark series, starting with The Birchbark House (1999)
What about the indigenous people who would have populated the Laura Ingalls Wilder universe? This series, set around the same time as the Little House books and written for children around the same age, tells the story of Ojibwe kids living on an island in Lake Superior.

Original Fire: Selected and New Poems (2003)
One reviewer called Erdrich’s poems “seedbeds” for her novels, but they’re worthy of consideration on their own as well.

The Red Convertible: Selected and New Stories (2009)
Many of Erdrich’s short stories are seedbeds for her novels as well, and readers will find familiar faces as well as unexpected newcomers in this wide-ranging collection.

The Master Butchers Singing Club (2003)
Erdrich sticks to North Dakota but departs from her usual subjects in this novel, which follows a family of post-WWI European immigrants. They open a butcher shop, and they sing, and it’s beautiful.  

---

Have trouble reading standard print? Many of these titles are available in formats for patrons with print disabilities.

Staff picks are chosen by NYPL staff members and are not intended to be comprehensive lists. We'd love to hear your ideas too, so leave a comment and tell us what you’d recommend. And check out our Staff Picks browse tool for more recommendations!