SOURCE: "Louise Erdrich Revisits the Complex World of the Chippewa," in Chicago Tribune Books, November 14, 1993, pp. 3, 11.

In the following review, Rubenstein praises Erdrich's up-dated edition of Love Medicine.

Louise Erdrich is not the first author to return to a previously published work of fiction to amend it. The most well-known of such revisers, Henry James, published altered versions of his stories and novels—often accompanied by eloquent prefaces explaining the revisions—years after their original publication. Presumably, writers tinker with works already in print because events continue to develop and characters continue to pursue the lives their author has invented for them.

The latter seems especially true for Erdrich, whose first novel, Love Medicine, was originally published in 1984 and honored with the National Book Critics Circle Award that year. Returning readers, unlikely to have forgotten such vivid characters as Lipsha Morrissey and Lulu Lamartine, will relish the current...