Yet unlike the precise, slapstick comedics of The Beet Queen (1986), here the doings are all overdetermined by the slap and slather of Erdrich's lyricism. Finally, it's miracles and love medicine and spirit intercessions that bring everything into harmony-and that Erdrich, as ever, wants to celebrate. To win her wholly, Lipsha (who works at Lyman's bingo parlor) will go to any length, including subjecting himself to a vision-contest with Lyman-from which he returns sprayed on by a skunk. Lipsha's ardor is transcendental, biblical, greater-than-great but Shawnee could take him or leave him-and does both.
Plucked from the revolving carousel of Erdrich's Chippewa characters now is Lipsha Morrissey-the good-for-nothing doofus son of much-escaped convict Gerry Nanapush and spooky June Kapshaw-who's been batting around off the reservation but returns and promptly falls stone in love with Shawnee Ray, a single mother half-pledged to the tribe's gambling-casino entrepreneur, the much older Lyman Lamartine.
