(born 1954) Born of a Chippewa Indian mother and German American father, Erdrich grew up in North Dakota and earned a degree in anthropology from Dartmouth in 1976. Her first book, Love Medicine (1984), won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Subsequent novels have further developed the characters from her first book, drawing on both sides of her heritage to explore the interaction of Native Americans and their European American neighbors. Her use of multiple narrators and recurring characters has been likened to Faulkner. Most of her work has been a collaboration with her late husband, Michael Dorris, who committed suicide in 1995.