Tracks

Tracks, by Louise Erdrich, appeared as the third in a tetralogy of works beginning with Love Medicine, continuing with The Beet Queen, and ending with The Bingo Palace. All of these novels center on the history of the Chippewa or Ojibwe tribe located in and around the fictional town of Argus, North Dakota. In Tracks, Erdrich reaches back into the early twentieth century to retell the great losses the Chippewa tribe experienced. When disease and starvation fail to kill off all the Chippewa people, the government colludes with logging companies to steal the remaining peoples’ land through ruinously high yearly land allotment payments. Survival alone becomes the paramount objective. Tribal unity and loyalty become frayed, and humanity tested, as some sell their land to the white government Agent or the loggers, while others struggle to keep their land no matter the price exacted.

Two narrators alternate to tell the story of twelve years in the history of the tribe: Nanapush, a tribal elder, and Pauline, a young orphan girl. Covering the years from 1912 to 1924, the events depicted through the two narrators’ visions both echo and contradict each other.