Love medicine
Love medicineLove Medicine
Love Medicine is a novel about relationships. It is about families and lovers. It is about love as the tie that binds. The characters in the novel live throughout their lives experiencing different things with different people, but it all comes back to love as the force that brings them together.
The story is set around a North Dakota Indian reservation over a span of fifty years. It is the story of two families who lives intertwine because of different bonds of both love and hate. You are introduced to the main character of the novel, Marie Lazzare Kashpaw, while she is still in her youth. As a young Indian, she goes to live at the Sacred Heart convent. She is taken under the wing of the twisted Sister Leopolda who beats and abuses Satan out of her soul. Yet, Marie puts up with her abusive treatment. Sister Leopolda explains her harshness to Marie as a difference between herself and the Devil. "He wants you. That's the difference. I give you love." Marie both does come to hate and love her. This nun made her as strong as she was. She gave her pride in herself; pride to prove to Leopolda that the Devil was not within her and that she could succeed even as the wife of an Indian.
There are relationships in the novel that contained true love. Many of these relationships were not marriages, but they outlasted everything. Nector Kashpaw is possibly the most significant character in that sense in the novel. His love life ties the lives of the two main characters of the novel, Marie Kashpaw and Lulu Lamartine. In Nector’s youth he had promised to marry Lulu, but then found himself in the arms of Marie. He marries her instead and has children and a life with her. Lulu goes from man to man having children all with different paternal lineage. Yet it is Lulu that Nector really loves, and as much as she hates to admit it, it is Nector that still holds her heart. They have an affair together that continues for years until Nector is forced to choose between them. He loves Lulu, but is rejected by her and returns to Marie. Although he is still with Marie, his heart still belongs to Lulu.
In the course of Nector's death and a joint business venture with Lyman Lamartine, the two women become close. They form a bond with each other through their mutual connection to Nector that is very surprising for they had been rivals throughout his lifetime. They are able to overcome their hatred for each other because of their love for Nectar. They are able to mourn together, reminisce together, even laugh together. It is love that causes their tie and a combining of the two families.
The friendship and marriage of Gordie Kashpaw and June Kashpaw, who were playmates and cousins, is another relationship that depicts the strength...
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