FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

BOOKS AND ISLANDS IN OJIBWE COUNTRY
Novelist Louise Erdrich's Evocative Memoir on Her Ojibwe Heritage

WASHINGTON (March 7, 2003)—Books and islands feature large in best-selling author Louise Erdrich's life. "My travels have become so focused on books and islands that the two have merged for me," she writes in a new memoir, aptly titled BOOKS AND ISLANDS IN OJIBWE COUNTRY (National Geographic Books, ISBN 0-7922-5719-7, June 2003, $20).

In this lyrical and deeply personal narrative, Erdrich sets out with her infant daughter and the baby's father, an Ojibwe traditional healer, spiritual leader and guide, on an evocative journey to the lakes of her Ojibwe forebears in southern Ontario. On the islands of Lake of the Woods, they visit centuries-old rock and cliff paintings, still alive and respected by contemporary Ojibwe, who read them as teaching and dream guides. "These islands are books in themselves…You could think of the lakes as libraries," Erdrich writes, so powerfully do these pictographs of spirit figures, turtles, drums and thunderbirds still communicate.

Erdrich writes movingly about Ojibwe spirits and dreams, language and folklore, beauties and sorrows, passed down through generations. She tells of leaving offerings of tobacco, sage bundles, red cloth and a ribbon shirt to the spirits of the lake and the rock paintings. She explains the rich Ojibwe pharmacy contained in the bogs off the islands: willow for indigestion and headaches, sumac for dysentery, white cedar for coughs, winabojobikuk for snakebite, milkweed as a charm for drawing deer, snakeroot for good luck and health.

Erdrich then travels to Rainy Lake, to an island of real books, where Ernest Oberholtzer, an exuberant eccentric and close friend to the Ojibwe established an extraordinary library at his home there a hundred years ago. Visitors to this home, packed with thousands of rare volumes, from crumbling copies of early 18th-century books and signed first editions of Mark Twain to a magnificent collection of ethnographic works on the Ojibwe, are overcome with "a fever to read, or at least a fever to open the books," writes Erdrich.

Set against commentary about her family and contemporary life, and written in beautiful and powerful prose, BOOKS AND ISLANDS IN OJIBWE COUNTRY is a thoughtful and intimate cultural excursion into the fascinating world of a highly esteemed novelist. The book is the latest title in National Geographic's Directions series, featuring travel memoirs by some of the world's most highly regarded literary figures.

Erdrich is a native of North Dakota, where she was raised by her Ojibwe-French mother and German-American father. She is the author of nine novels, including the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning "Love Medicine" and the National Book Award finalist "The Last Report on the Miracles of Little No Horse," as well as poetry and children's books. Her most recent novel, "Master Butchers Singing Club," is a national best-seller. Erdrich lives in Minneapolis with her four daughters.

CONTACT:
Alison Reeves
+1 202 857 7793

areeves@ngs.org