Native storytelling and narrative innovation: Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine as fictional ethnography

The narrative innovations in Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine, particularly its unique treatment of time and character, are addressed in this study. The narrative investigation serves as a basis for the paper to suggest a new way to read the novel, as a "fictional ethnography". This type of reading shows how the narrative strategy in the novel comments on American Indian history of the twentieth century. In this way the novel shows how narrative devices can be a part of a social and political debate in literature