Shadow Tag

Louise Erdrich is the author of fifteen novels as well as volumes of poetry, children's books, short stories, and a memoir of early motherhood. Her novel The Round House won the National Book Award for Fiction. The Plague of Doves won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and her debut novel, Love Medicine, was the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. Erdrich has received the Library of Congress Prize in American Fiction, the prestigious PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. She lives in Minnesota with her daughters and is the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore.

"Gripping...a hushed and haunting tale." -- USA Today "A portrait of an 'iconic' marriage on its way to dissolution...Erdrich's unbridled urgency yields startlingly original phrasing as well as flashes of blinding lucidity." -- New York Times Book Review " A fierce novel...raw...alive...vividly present...it marks a breakthrough for the author." -- Columbus Dispatch "Read this if: You're looking for a well-written, well-told tale that is thought- and discussion- provoking." -- Baltimore Sun "A page-turner...a most compelling novel" -- Dallas Morning News "SHADOW TAG is hard to put down...It builds to a spectacular ending with a twist I didn't see coming...Erdrich has taken a tragedy and turned it into art." -- Philadelphia Inquirer "A domestic drama that builds an almost thriller-like momentum...A novel as dark and tragic as it is difficult to put down" -- San Diego Union-Tribune Clear, urgent, deep as a swift river...accomplishes the literary miracle of making a reader ravenous to finish it, while stinging with regret at how soon it must end." -- San Francisco Chronicle "SHADOW TAG is compelling...a searing, personal examination of one family that's falling apart." -- Miami Herald "An exquisite, character-driven tale...its piercing insights into sex, family, and power are breathtaking...A masterfully concentrated and gripping novel of image and conquest, autonomy and love, inheritance and loss." -- Donna Seaman, Booklist "Muscular and fearless...It is [Erdrich's] superb telling of this story that makes it real, her stellar writing that brings powerful truth to invented worlds." -- BookPage "Erdrich offers a portrait that's convincing...Shadow Tag is wonderfully, painfully readable and revealing." -- Minneapolis Star Tribune "A fast-paced novel of exceptional artistic, intellectual, and psychological merit...Nowhere have love's complications been better illustrated than in the raw honesty of Shadow Tag." -- Boston Sunday Globe "A masterpiece...a captivating work of fiction...exquisite...tightly focused...arresting...This profoundly tragic novel captures that lament in some of Erdrich's most beautiful and urgent writing." -- Ron Charles, Washington Post "A brilliant cautionary tale...Reading it is like watching a wildfire whose flames are so mesmerizingly beautiful that it's almost easy to ignore the deadly mess left behind." -- Library Journal "Into this deeply personal novel about marriage, family and individual identity, Erdrich weaves broader questions about cause and effect in history...A small masterpiece of compelling, painfully moving fiction." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)