Louise Erdrich is an American writer who is of mixed Native American and white ancestry.  Her heritage plays a role in many of her novels--many of the characters struggle to connect the two halves of themselves.

One such example is her 1988 novel called Tracks. The two narrators of the novel are Nanapush, a Native American elder who is trying to reconcile his granddaughter Lulu with her mother, Fleur.  The other is a mixed race girl named Pauline who eventually comes to be Fleur’s midwife. The stories told in the novel date all the way back to 1912.  Since the novel is written with two narrators, the events it details may or may not be entirely correct. 

One of the main themes in many of Erdrich’s works is the disparity and relationship between Christianity and Native American spirituality. The lives of characters in Tracks are controlled by tenets of Christianity and of Native American spirituality. These apparently opposing forces often seem to form a cohesive ideology. This ideology is postmodern because, like modern pervasive forces such as the internet, these tenets of Christianity/spirituality are so tightly woven into characters’ lives they can’t separate where religion ends and the individual begins, exemplified by peoples’ fear of Fleur and hatred of Pauline.

Native American spirituality and ritual has become interwoven with Christianity in their community. The day after seeing what could have been “a spirit bear,” “the priest came, prepared for the last rites but very pleased to have a new life in their place.” Despite the Native American tradition’s prominence, this juxtaposition of Christianity and Native American spirituality is seamless, pervading life so completely it seems to be rarely questioned. Behaviors influenced by religion and spirituality vs. behaviors influenced by personal taste are not separated.  

This idea is emphasized with the characters and perceptions of Fleur and Pauline. Fleur is primarily viewed and feared to be a sorceress because of her perceived magical behaviors. People believed Eli loved her because they believed she had “wound her private hairs around the buttons of Eli’s shirt…had stirred smoky powders or crushed snakeroot into his tea.” Occurrences in her life and ideas about her are explained and realized because of peoples’ views of her as magical. Community members can’t see traits in Fleur’s life potentially created by her individuality rather than her sorcery. 

Similarly, Pauline creates her behavior around the context of being a martyr and is hated because the individual she tries to cover with these behaviors often comes through. She wears her shoes on the wrong feet and only allows herself two bathroom breaks per day. She creates this lifestyle for herself because she believes Jesus would appreciate it; she isn’t guided in any specific way. Community members hate her because her true identity—which she tries to hide and forget in her quest for martyrdom—is revealed when she doesn’t help Fleur with her second birth and seeks comfort for “the unceasing trial of [her] boiled hands.” 

Religion and spirituality hold a great amount of control over peoples’ perceptions of behavior and their behavior itself, despite their understanding of its pervasiveness. This control without understanding is what turns this novel, which is outside of a common postmodern setting, into a postmodern novel.