Power dies, power goes under and gutters out, ungraspable. It is momentary, quick of flight and liable to deceive. As soon as you rely on the possession it is gone. Forget that it ever existed, and it returns. I never made the mistake of thinking that I owned my own strength, that was my secret. And so I never was alone in my failures. I was never to blame entirely when all was lost, when my desperate cures had no effect on the suffering of those I loved. For who can blame a man waiting, the doors open, the windows open, food offered, arms stretched wide? Who can blame him if the visitor does not arrive.

Edrich returned to Dartmouth in 2009 to receive an honorary Doctorate of Letters and deliver the commencement address to the graduating class of her alma mater. Erdrich earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University in 1979. In addition to books the store sells Native art and traditional medicines and it is something of a locus for Native literati in the Twin Cities.

She is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians a band of the Anishinaabe (also known as Ojibwa and Chippewa). She is also the owner of Birchbark Books a small independent bookstore in Minneapolis that focuses on Native American literature and the Native community in the Twin Cities. In 2009 her novel The Plague of Doves was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.