Louise Erdrich's foremost subject throughout her writing career has been the Native American culture -- primarily that of the Chippewa -- of the northern Midwest. Born in Minnesota in 1954, Erdrich was raised in North Dakota, where her parents taught at a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school; Erdrich later attended Dartmouth College and Johns Hopkins University. Love Medicine (1984), her first novel, was also the first novel in the Native American tetralogy that includes The Beet Queen (1986), Tracks (1988), and The Bingo Palace (1994). These four novels trace the saga of two extended families on a North Dakota Chippewa reservation, exploring the impact of intense poverty, insensitive government policies, alcoholism, and the Catholic Church on a culture that nonetheless survives. Erdrich was married to the late writer Michael Dorris, with whom she collaborated on The Crown of Columbus (1991).