Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House” books chronicled the life of a pioneer family as they moved west across America. But the other side of that story has remained untold: the story of the Native Americans forced from their ancestral lands; people whose lives were rich with hard work, love, humor, joy, and sorrow. In the first of a cycle of novels partly based on her own family history, Louise Erdrich begins to tell this story from the point of view of a young Ojibwa girl on an island in Lake Superior in 1847.

Omakayas and her family live on the land her people call the Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker. Although the chimookoman (white people) claim more and more of their land, life continues much as it always has. Every summer they build a new birchbark house; every fall they go to ricing camp to harvest and feast; they move to the cedar log house before the first snows arrive, and celebrate the end of the long winter at maple sugaring camp. In between, Omakayas fights with her annoying brother, Pinch; plays with the adorable baby, Neewo; and admires her big sister, Angeline. Then one winter night, the satisfying rhythms of their life are shattered when a visitor comes to their lodge, bringing with him an invisible enemy that will change things forever. By turns moving and humorous, filled with fascinating details of traditional Ojibwa life, The Birchbark House is a breathtaking tour de force by a gifted writer.

Louise Erdrich is the author of many critically acclaimed and best-selling books, including Love Medicine, a National Book Critics Circle Award Winner; and Tales of Burning Love and The Antelope Wife. She is also the author of a picture book, Grandmother’s Pigeon, illustrated by Jim LaMarche. The Birchbark House is her first novel for young readers, and the first book she has illustrated. She is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwa and lives with her daughters in Minnesota.