Louise Erdrich Author Read Alikes
November 2021
If you enjoy reading books by Louise Erdrich, try these authors whose titles are also accessible through Digital Library of Illinois (Overdrive and Libby apps) and Hoopla
Five Tuesdays in Winter
by Lily King

A collection of short stories from the best-selling author of Writers & Lovers explores desire, heartache, loss and love in tales about a neglected teenage boy befriended by housesitting college students and a bookseller's unspoken love for his employee.

Scheduled release date: Nov. 9, 2021 - place holds on physical copy now.
 
When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky
by Margaret Verble

After disaster strikes during one of her shows, Two Feathers, a young Cherokee horse-diver on loan to Glendale Park Zoo from a Wild West show, must get to the bottom of a mystery that spans centuries with the help of an eclectic cast of characters. 

Physical copy available. Also available on Overdrive/ Libby.
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

To come to terms with who she is and what she wants, Ailey, the daughter of an accomplished doctor and a strict schoolteacher, embarks on a journey through her family’s past, helping her embrace her full heritage, which is the story of the Black experience in itself. 

Physical copy available. Also available on Overdrive/ Libby.
 
Monogamy 
by Sue Miller

Derailed by the sudden passing of her husband of 30 years, an artist on the brink of a gallery opening struggles to pick up the pieces of her life before discovering harrowing evidence of her husband’s affair. 

Physical copy available. Also available on Overdrive/ Libby and Hoopla. 
These Ghosts are Family 
by Maisy Card

A man on his deathbed reveals that he stole another man’s identity decades earlier, traces the family’s history from colonial Jamaica to present-day Harlem and reconnects with the firstborn daughter he never knew. 

Physical copy available. Also available on Overdrive/ Libby.
The Party Upstairs
by Lee Conell

Tensions escalate throughout a single day in a genteel New York City apartment building where a superintendent and his adult daughter spark a crisis involving class distinctions, family bonds and the expectations of privilege. 

Available on Overdrive/ Libby.
This Town Sleeps 
by Dennis E. Staples

Engaging in a secret affair with a closeted white man, an Ojibwe from a northern Minnesota reservation navigates small-town discrimination before a ghost leads him to the grave of a basketball star whose murder becomes linked to a local legend.

Available on Overdrive/ Libby and Hoopla. 
A Long Petal of the Sea
by Isabel Allende

Sponsored by the poet Pablo Neruda to flee the violence of the Spanish Civil War, a pregnant widow and an army doctor unite in an arranged marriage only to be swept up by the early days of World War II. 

Physical copy available. Also available on Overdrive/ Libby.
Chances are...
by Richard Russo

One beautiful September day, three sixty-six-year-old men convene on Marthas Vineyard, friends ever since meeting in college, and must puzzle out a lingering mystery from the summer of 1971.

Physical copy available. Also available on Overdrive/ Libby.
God Help the Child
by Toni Morrison

Traces the impact of childhood trauma on the lives of a beautiful multiracial woman, the man she loves and an abused white girl who looks to her for help.

Physical copy available. Also available on Overdrive/ Libby.
Boy, Snow, Bird
by Helen Oyeyemi

A modern reimagining of the Snow White fairy tale follows the experiences of a woman who marries a mid-20th-century Massachusetts single father and succumbs to vanity when the birth of her baby reveals her husband to be a light-skinned African American. 

Physical copy available. Also available on Overdrive/ Libby and Hoopla. 
All My Puny Sorrows
by Miriam Toews

Two Mennonite sisters, Elfrieda and Yolandi, struggle with Elf's depression and attempts to end her life while holding their family together. 

Available on Overdrive/ Libby and Hoopla. 
When the Emperor was Divine 
by Julie Otsuka

A story told from five different points of view--a mother receiving the evacuation order, her daughter on the train ride to the camp, the son in the desert internment camp, the family's return home, and the final release of the father after years in captivity--chronicles the experiences of Japanese Americans caught up in the nightmare of the World War II internment camps. 

Physical copy available. Also available on Overdrive/ Libby.
All the Ugly and Wonderful Things
by Bryn Greenwood

Growing up wary of others, the daughter of a drug dealer cares for her younger brother and finds peace in the starry night sky before forging an unusual friendship with one of her father's thugs that leads to a tragedy and perspective changes.

Available on Overdrive/ Libby.
Prudence
by David Treuer

When his farewell departure for World War II is shattered by an act of violence involving an escaped German soldier, bombardier Frankie Washburn witnesses the unfolding of consequences that reverberate for several years. 

Available on Overdrive/ Libby.
Let Him Go
by Larry Watson

Years after losing their son in a horseback riding accident, steadfast Margaret of 1951 North Dakota seeks to retrieve her grandson from the daughter-in-law who ran off with another man but finds her efforts challenged by her reluctant husband and the boy's troublemaking stepfamily.

Physical copy available. Also available on Overdrive/ Libby and Hoopla. 
Three Day Road
by Joseph Boyden

The nephew of a Canadian Oji-Cree who is the last of a line of healers and diviners, Cree reserve student Xavier enlists in the military during World War I, a conflict throughout which he and his friend, Elijah, are marginalized for their appearances, their culturally enhanced marksmanship, and their disparate views of the war. 

Available on Hoopla.  
The Englishman's Boy
by Guy Vanderhaeghe

The life of Harry Vincent, a title-writer in 1920s Hollywood, collides with the story of a young drifter known as the Englishman's boy, who in 1873 joins a group of wolf hunters in search of a ring of horse thieves, as Harry prepares to work on a movie being made about him some fifty years later.

Available on Hoopla.  
Oh William! 
by Elizabeth Strout

The iconic heroine of My Name is Lucy Barton recounts her complicated, compassionate relationship with William, her first husband—and longtime, on-again-off-again friend and confidant—and the lives they eventually built with other people.

Waitlist - place holds on physical copy or on Overdrive/ Libby now.
The Family
by Naomi Krupitsky

Pushing against the boundaries of society’s expectations and fighting to preserve their complex but life-sustaining friendship, Sofia Colicchio and Antonia Russo, who live in the shadow of their fathers’ unspoken community until Antonia’s father disappears, find their loyalty tested on one fateful night.

Waitlist - place holds on physical copy or on Overdrive/ Libby now.
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