SOURCE: "Revenge of the Chippewa Witch," in Commonweal, Vol. CXV, No. 19, November 4, 1988, pp. 596-98.

In the following review, Vecsey dispels possible criticism of Tracks as stereotypical and improbable, instead positing that the novel's mythic elements bring American Indian history to life.

Tracks is Louise Erdrich's third novel of rural North Dakota. Love Medicine (1984) delineated a frayed line of Chippewa Indian lives in contemporary America. The Beet Queen (1986) portrayed a braid of their struggling, non-Indian neighbors of a generation or two ago. Both books were hung together by lyrical threads that highlighted and augmented the bleak and painful stuff of the stories wherein the lives of these peoples were intertwined. Both were masterworks.

Tracks brings the reader back to the early years of this century, 1912–1924, and it ties a knot of narrative around the previous novels. The style maintains the densely spiritual quality of her earlier work, resembling in...