William Faulkner's linked short stories in such works as Go Down, Moses foreshadow the structures that Erdrich creates in her novels. The focus of Faulkner's stories is on the McCaslin family from the pre-Civil War past to the novel's present in the twentieth century. Erdrich's The Antelope Wife deals with more families, but the historical sweep of the novel is similar to Faulkner's. Animals like Old Ben the bear in Faulkner and the dog Lion provide symbolic aspects of wilderness and human behavior just as Erdrich's antelope women do in TheAntelope Wife. As Faulkner's novel leaves gaps in action and story line for readers to make connections, so does Erdrich in The Antelope Wife. Faulkner's novel is a moving account of the racial dilemmas in the South, while Erdrich deals with a Native American reality midway between the reservation and the city, Minneapolis. Faulkner critically examines...