If there were a Louise Erdrich fan club, I would nominate myself president of it. I knew when I first read the magnetic words of this National Book Award-winning author of more than two-dozen books that I had to read everything she wrote. Who else has her gift for rich characterization and historical detail, her […]
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Overview
A stunning collection of short stories by Louise Erdrich, author of the National Book Award-winning The Round House. Selected by the author herself from over three decades of work, The Red Convertible is a veritable masterclass in the art of short fiction. In "Saint Marie," a Native American girl leaves her reservation to enter the Sacred Heart Convent and is propelled into a life-and-death struggle with the diabolical Sister Leopolda. "Knives" features a homely butcher's assistant, a devoted reader of love stories, who falls for a good-looking but predatory traveling salesman with devastating consequences for each of them. A passion for music in "Naked Woman Playing Chopin" proves more powerful than any experience of carnal or spiritual love; indeed, when Agnes DeWitt removes her clothing to enter the music of a particular composer, she sweeps all before her and transcends mortality and time itself.
A collection of breathtaking power and originality, The Red Convertible cements Louise Erdich's position in the pantheon of consummate, innovative writers of the American short story alongside such luminaries as Flannery O'Connor and Charles Baxter
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780061720253 |
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Publisher: | HarperCollins |
Publication date: | 01/06/2009 |
Edition description: | Large Print |
Pages: | 832 |
Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 8.98(h) x 1.64(d) |
About the Author
![About The Author](http://img.images-bn.com/static/redesign/srcs/images/grey-box.png?v11.9.4)
Louise Erdrich, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, is the award-winning author of many novels as well as volumes of poetry, children's books, and a memoir of early motherhood. Erdrich lives in Minnesota with her daughters and is the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore.
Hometown:
Minneapolis, MinnesotaDate of Birth:
June 7, 1954Place of Birth:
Little Falls, MinnesotaEducation:
B.A., Dartmouth College, 1976; M.A., Johns Hopkins University, 1979Read an Excerpt
The Red Convertible
Selected and New Stories, 1978-2008
By Louise Erdrich
HarperCollins
Copyright © 2009
Louise Erdrich
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-06-153607-6
Chapter One The Red Convertible
I was the first one to drive a convertible on my reservation. And of course it was red, a red Olds. I owned that car along with my brother Stephan. We owned it together until his boots filled with water on a windy night and he bought out my share. Now Stephan owns the whole car and his younger brother Marty (that's myself) walks everywhere he goes.
How did I earn enough money to buy my share in the first place? My one talent was I could always make money. I had a touch for it, unusual in a Chippewa and especially in my family. From the first I was different that way and everyone recognized it. I was the only kid they let in the Rolla legion hall to shine shoes, for example, and one Christmas I sold spiritual bouquets for the Mission door-to-door. The nuns let me keep a percentage. Once I started, it seemed the more money I made the easier the money came. Everyone encouraged it. When I was fifteen I got a job washing dishes at the Joliet Café, and that was where my first big break came.
It wasn't long before I was promoted to busing tables, and then the short-order cook quit and I was hired to take her place. No sooner than you know it I was managing the Joliet. The rest is history. I went on managing. I soon became part-owner and of course there was no stopping me then. It wasn't long before the whole thing was mine.
After I'd owned the Joliet one year it burned down. The whole operation. I was only twenty. I had it all and I lost it quick, but before I lost it I had every one of my relatives, and their relatives, to dinner and I also bought that red Olds I mentioned, along with Stephan.
that time we first saw it! I'll tell you when we first saw it. We had gotten a ride up to Winnipeg and both of us had money. Don't ask me why because we never mentioned a car or anything, we just had all our money. Mine was cash, a big bankroll. Stephan had two checks-a week's extra pay for being laid off, and his regular check from the Jewel Bearing Plant.
We were walking down Portage anyway, seeing the sights, when we saw it. There it was, parked, large as alive. Really as if it was alive. I thought of the word "repose" because the car wasn't simply stopped, parked, or whatever. That car reposed, calm and gleaming, a for sale sign in its left front window. Then before we had thought it over at all, the car belonged to us and our pockets were empty. We had just enough money for gas back home.
We went places in that car, me and Stephan. A little bit of insurance money came through from the fire and we took off driving all one whole summer. I can't tell you all the places we went to. We started off toward the Little Knife River and Mandaree in Fort Berthold and then we found ourselves down in Wakpala somehow and then suddenly we were over in Montana on the Rocky Boys and yet the summer was not even half over. Some people hang on to details when they travel, but we didn't let them bother us and just lived our everyday lives here to there.
I do remember there was this one place with willows; however, I laid under those trees and it was comfortable. So comfortable. The branches bent down all around me like a tent or a stable. And quiet, it was quiet, even though there was a dance close enough so I could see it going on. It was not too still, or too windy either, that day. When the dust rises up and hangs in the air around the dancers like that I feel comfortable. Stephan was asleep. Later on he woke up and we started driving again. We were somewhere in Montana, or maybe on the Blood Reserve, it could have been anywhere. Anyway, it was where we met the girl.
all her hair was in buns around her ears, that's the first thing I saw. She was alongside the road with her arm out so we stopped. That girl was short, so short her lumbershirt looked comical on her, like a nightgown. She had jeans on and fancy moccasins and she carried a little suitcase.
"Hop on in," says Stephan. So she climbs in between us.
"We'll take you home," I says, "Where do you live?"
"Chicken," she says.
"Where's that?" I ask her.
"Alaska."
"Okay," Stephan says, and we drive.
We got up there and never wanted to leave. The sun doesn't truly set there in summer and the night is more a soft dusk. You might doze off, sometimes, but before you know it you're up again, like an animal in nature. You never feel like you have to sleep hard or put away the world. And things would grow up there. One day just dirt or moss, the next day flowers and long grass. The girl's family really took to us. They fed us and put us up. We had our own tent to live in by their house and the kids would be in and out of there all day and night.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Red Convertible by Louise Erdrich Copyright © 2009 by Louise Erdrich. Excerpted by permission.
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