I'm reading The Blue Jay's Dance right now and loving it. I think Louise Erdrich is such a good writer --- so specific and original in her details (specific...details. redundant?!). She is also incredibly honest about how she perceives events and can evoke strong emotion with just a phrase. Here's something I read today, the first in this book that really inspired me to put it here to share:
(She's just been reflecting on the old house she lives in and its "ghosts", and how she doesn't want to leave her sad stories there. "No," she writes, "that will not be the story told here.")

Blind will without direction. Stubborn and insufficient love. Bewildering love. Helpless and devouring love of children. Forged love, married love, love that starts molten and throughout its life must be thrown back into the fire, reshaped, restored. Sometimes a vase, a startling beast, a perfect shoe, there is no predicting the raw shape of love when it drops from the burning mold. Married passion is a quest, in the end, and the lovers are its heroes, fighting along the way demons of their own making and of others, changing identities, carving their initials into each other's hearts.