The Red Convertible: Selected and New Stories, 1978-2008

A stunning collection of short stories by Louise Erdrich, author of the National Book Award-winning The Round House. Selected by the author herself from over three decades of work, The Red Convertible is a veritable masterclass in the art of short fiction. In "Saint Marie," a Native American girl leaves her reservation to enter the Sacred Heart Convent and is propelled into a life-and-death struggle with the diabolical Sister Leopolda. "Knives" features a homely butcher's assistant, a devoted reader of love stories, who falls for a good-looking but predatory traveling salesman with devastating consequences for each of them. A passion for music in "Naked Woman Playing Chopin" proves more powerful than any experience of carnal or spiritual love; indeed, when Agnes DeWitt removes her clothing to enter the music of a particular composer, she sweeps all before her and transcends mortality and time itself.

A collection of breathtaking power and originality, The Red Convertible cements Louise Erdich's position in the pantheon of consummate, innovative writers of the American short story alongside such luminaries as Flannery O'Connor and Charles Baxter

Louise Erdrich, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, is the author of many novels as well as volumes of poetry, children's books, and a memoir of early motherhood. Her novel The Round House won the National Book Award for Fiction. Love Medicine and LaRose received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. Erdrich lives in Minnesota with her daughters and is the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore. Her most recent book, The Night Watchman, won the Pulitzer Prize. A ghost lives in her creaky old house.