Erdrich, Louise

Love and Tragedy

Karen Louise Erdrich, the oldest of seven children, was born in 1954 and grew up in a warm, storyloving home near the Turtle Mountain Reservation, where her French Ojibwe (Chippewa) mother, Rita, was born and where her grandfather was tribal chair. Her often-retold story of being given a nickel for each story she wrote shows how her early creative ambition was fostered by her parents, who were both teachers at a Bureau of Indian Affairs school. In The Blue Jay's Dance: A Birth Year (1995), her meditative chronicle of her pregnancies and motherhood, Erdrich describes her own mother—an artist—as supremely patient and child-centered, venting any frustrations through sewing or canning tomatoes. Erdrich was an avid reader and absorbed the oral stories of tribal life and settlement from her elders. She traveled east to college, earning an M.A. in writing from Johns Hopkins after completing her B.A. at Dartmouth, where she met Michael Dorris, a founder and first chair of the college's Native American Studies Program. Erdrich has two sisters, Heid and Lise, who are also writers.

When Erdrich and Dorris married in 1981, he was already the single father of three adopted Native American children, all of whom suffered, to varying degrees, from the debilitating effects of fetal alcohol syndrome. Erdrich formally adopted Reynold Abel, Jeffrey Sava, and Madeline Hannah; the couple subsequently had three more daughters, Persia, Pallas, and Aza. The Broken Cord (1989), Dorris' influential and controversial memoir (with a forthright and moving forward by Erdrich), won the 1989 National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction and helped spur legislation to warn of the dangers of alcohol consumption during pregnancy. The Broken Cord recounts the anguish of raising a child (called Adam in the book) with severe impairments and indicts the alcoholic mothers who knowingly compromise their unborn children's development. Reynold Abel was struck by a car and killed in 1993.

The Erdrich/Dorris union seemed an almost preternaturally intimate one, with both authors planning, composing, and editing each other's work in their child-filled New Hampshire farmhouse. The extent of their collaborations isn't public knowledge, but each has credited the other with being catalyst, support, and muse. Two works carry both their names: a novel, The Crown of Columbus[Page 356](1991) and a collection of travel essays, Route Two (1990). Their partnership ended tragically and very publicly amidst sensational allegations of child abuse. They unsuccessfully sued Jeffrey Sava for extortion; both Madeline and Jeffrey Sava accused the couple of child abuse. Two of his biological daughters accused Dorris of sexual abuse as well.

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