June 7th 1954; Award-winning novelist Louise Erdrich is born on this day in Little Falls, Minnesota. Erdrich's Native American heritage became a dominant theme in her novels, which explored the lives of American Indian families. Her grandfather was tribal chairman for the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota, and Erdrich was raised in the nearby town of Wahpeton, where her parents taught at a boarding school for Native American children run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Her 1998 novel The Antelope Wife features a deteriorating marriage and a husband who slides into drunkenness and self-pity before shooting himself. In the book's dedication, she was careful to make it clear that the subject matter was not based on Dorris' life. It read, "This book was written before the death of my husband." Many of Erdrich's later works–including The Master Butchers Singing Club (2003), The Plague of Doves (2008), and Shadow Tag (2010)–draw on her multiethnic background and address issues of family, community, and history. The Plague of Doves was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2009.