The Bingo Palace

The Story

Louise Erdrich's brilliant novels of contemporary Native American and Midwestern life have brought her legions of fans and great critical acclaim. Here, in her latest and most luminescent work in the series begun with Love Medicine, the central character is Lipsha Morrissey, the illegitimate son of June Kashpaw and Gerry Nanapush. Lipsha brings together in his birth, rearing, and inheritance all of the major families from Erdrich's previous books, and, of course, represents the future. At a crossroads in his life, Lipsha is summoned by his grandmother. He returns to the reservation and falls in love for the first time. But the object of his newfound obssesive desire, the beautiful and charismatic Shawnee Ray, is in the midst of deciding whether to marry Kipsha's boss, the wealthy reservation entrepreneur Lyman Lamartine. Lipsha is determined to win Shawnee Ray's love and begins with a modern approach - he asks her out for Chinese food. When their evening goes hopelessly, absurdly awry, he decides to try a more traditional method and goes to see his great grandmother, Fleur Pillager, a tribeswoman of a powerful ancient family, to ask for a Love Medicine. After following Fleur to her home in the remote woods, he realizes that this sacred and cherished ground is the exact spot that Lyman and others with aggressive business interests have chosen to open their federally sanctioned bingo palace. As is the case on so many reservations today, Lipsha finds himself torn between success and meaning, love and money, the future and the past. A novel of spiritual depth, lyrical prose, and wild hope, The Bingo Palace explores the implications of the mystical element of chance in contemporary life andis sure to please all of Louise Erdrich's ardent fans as well as attract many new readers.