Louise Erdrich's first novel, Love Medicine, came out in 1984 to instant national acclaim, winning a National Book Circle Critics Award and launching a tetralogy which it would take Erdrich ten years to complete. In its centrality to Native American literary tradition, Love Medicine is an uncompromising and irresistible portrait of a community till then too often portrayed in flat or comic terms. Hertha Wong has established herself as the leading commentator on Erdrich.