Love Medicine

Love Medicine Summary | Chapter 1 Summary

Love Medicine begins on the morning before Easter Sunday as June Kashpaw, a middle-aged Chippewa woman, wanders the streets of Williston, North Dakota. The town is considered prosperous by North Dakota standards, and it is bustling with men ready to drink a fat wallet of cash away in one of the many bars. One of these men, a mud engineer named Andy, notices June walk by and taps on the window. June's body is still as lithe as a young girl's, though her face is worn with age. June walks into the bar as Andy is peeling a bright blue hard-boiled egg. She is mesmerized by the color, but it is her starvation that draws her toward him. Andy is amused and offers her the egg plus several more. She eats all of them as the bartender looks on. The first bar quickly leads to the next, after Andy pays for their beers with a thick wad of bills.

The pair becomes more amorous with each drink until they drive out of town to a deserted country road. Andy stops the car and climbs over to June's side, straddling her legs and moaning softly. After only a few minutes of brushing against her clothes, Andy climaxes and promptly passes out. June untangles herself, reaching blindly for the door handle until it gives and she falls onto the ground. In a trance, not knowing if she is drunk or more sober than ever, she decides to walk home. The snow falls deeper on this night than it has in forty years. The winds are heavy, and her boots are thin. Still, June Kashpaw stays her course.

A week after the Easter blizzard, summer seems to have arrived. Albertine Johnson receives an upsetting letter from her mother. Aunt June is gone. She's not only dead, but she's already buried. No one wanted to disturb her with the news. Albertine is respected for her choice to move off the reservation to go to college, but she is alternately punished by a lack of family information. Out of anger, Albertine cuts off contact with her mother for two months. During this time, she has conflicted memories of June. Many of them are warm, like the time she proclaimed Albertine's hair "princess hair," though most thoughts of June lead to the undeniably sad facts of her life. She was abandoned by her mother and went on to marry her cousin and abandon her own children.

When Albertine finally decides to visit the reservation, her mother Zelda and her Aunt Aurelia are in the kitchen baking pies. Albertine's presence is barely acknowledged as the women chatter and punch dough, a cloud of flour hanging in the air. The house now belongs to Aurelia, but it was where Grandpa and Grandma Kashpaw raised all of their children and lived until recently. The sisters argue over June, debating whether or not she did any good and under what circumstances she died. Grandma took June in and raised her with Zelda, Aurelia and Gordie. When June and Gordie got married and made each other miserable, no one could decide who to blame.

The conversation fizzles, and the women continue their work in the kitchen. Albertine hears a car pull into the driveway. It is Grandma and Grandpa Kashpaw with King, June's son, and his family. There is a slow procession from the car into the house. Grandma gets out and notices that Grandpa is still sitting, unaware that they have arrived. Meanwhile, King and his wife Lynette argue violently over who will help Grandpa out of the car. The resemblance between June and King spooks Albertine, as he almost comes to blows with his wife.

In Grandpa Nector's advanced age, he is strikingly different from his twin brother Eli. When the twins were young, the government put Nector in school, and Grandma hid Eli to keep him at home. Education did not spare Nector from senility, while Eli remains clear-headed and continues to live independently. Eli joins the group later on. Grandpa Nector is content to sit in a lawn chair outside, while Grandma Kashpaw joins her daughter for some gossip in the kitchen. The topic is still June, and the story is about the time she almost got hung by Zelda, Gordie and Aurelia. Grandma Kashpaw recalls the story with humor, and it releases the previous tension when laughter erupts throughout the kitchen.

The extended family gathering reveals all sorts of fissures, most of which broke after June's death. King is a rotten young man who received a small inheritance after June's death, with which he bought a tricked out car. Lipsha Morrissey is King's brother, though he doesn't know it. The boys share the same mother - June. The extent of Lipsha's knowledge is that he was taken in by Grandma Kashpaw, and no one can say who his parents really are. By the hostile way King has always acted toward Lipsha, Albertine wonders if he knows the truth. The party disperses after King and Lynette start fighting and after the food is all eaten. Albertine goes off with Lipsha and makes a few attempts to talk about June, but the conversation doesn't take.