Louise Erdrich is an American treasure. A Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner, she spends so much of her livelihood celebrating the wondrous and not so wondrous elements of her Chippewa upbringing. She even has a bookstore in her native Minnesota called Birchbark Books, which focuses its inventory on Native American literature.

Erdrich continues to share her immense talent with readers in PYTHON’S KISS, a collection of 13 beautiful and sometimes comic short stories, many of which have been published in literary magazines like Granta and The New Yorker. What makes this book especially cool is the gorgeous woodcuts made by her daughter, Aza Erdrich Abe, who clearly is a talented artist in her own right.

"Erdrich is a magical writer... The 13 stories in PYTHON’S KISS are so perfectly put together that readers will feel as if they have just completed 13 novels' worth of character, beauty, evil and competition."

In Ojibwe mythology, Mishipeshu --- a reptile with the head of a cat --- is a sentinel that stands at the gates of the underworld. PYTHON’S KISS travels the borderland between the spiritual and earthbound humanity. There is a real sense of working one’s way through the never-ending array of emotional states --- from pain to joy and back again. As is Erdrich’s style, the poignancy and wonder of being a highly dimensional person on Mother Earth is at the heart of every story.

The title piece is a roughshod examination of the vain and ridiculous battles of toxic masculinity. In “Hollow Children,” a school bus driver takes on a fear-soaked journey in a freak spring blizzard. “Domain” is about corporate-owned afterlife opportunities and the woman hot on revenge who becomes entangled with their monstrous process.

Each story explores the relationship of humans with Gaia, Mother Earth, the protective and difficult purveyor of all. Erdrich’s empathy for humanity’s foibles is never overwhelmed by circumstance and the rights and wrongs of tradition versus modern life. Although her characters are well-connected to the deities of their beliefs, they are also brick-and-mortar beings who may not always be able to handle the fates and furies that the world hands to them.

Erdrich is a magical writer, and the inclusion of Aza’s artwork --- with its deep-cut swirls, patterns and collages of the elements of her mother’s stories --- brings even more magic to the proceedings. She exemplifies her solid footing in the world between the sacred and the profane by the ways in which she incorporates her family members into her work. It’s an exciting addition to some of her most intensive tales.

It’s difficult to find a passage to quote here because every word is so tightly and beautifully tied to the story where it’s used. Erdrich’s work is like good woven tapestries of old. Not one stitch is out of place, and it will last well beyond the age in which it was created. Her commitment to the haunting calls of the past informs and enriches every story of young vs. old, man vs. woman, man vs. man and the lot. There is no end to her imaginative exploration of how people honor their lives, each other, and the animals that sit so closely at the center of their existence.

The 13 stories in PYTHON’S KISS are so perfectly put together that readers will feel as if they have just completed 13 novels' worth of character, beauty, evil and competition. It is a completely immersive experience that should be savored and revisited many times over.