Love Medicine

 The title of this chapter, "Love Medicine," lends its name to the entire book. Its centrality to the story must thus be taken into consideration. At first, Lipsha tries to rationalize his using a store-bought turkey heart over a self-shot goose heart by saying that love medicine itself is never a cure; rather, it is a placebo. People's belief in its power is all that matters. In his heart he knows this is not true, and sees the repercussions of his actions when his grandfather dies after choking on the heart. Yet by the end of the chapter, he has reached a medium of knowledge: "I said to her what my understanding brought me. 'Love medicine ain't what brings him back to you, Grandma...It's true feeling, not no magic. No supermarket heart could have brung him back.'" Lipsha's uneducated language often hides the true intelligence he possesses. Nowhere is this more apparent than in this quote. Lipsha conveys the essential truth of human connection through love, even if it took an act of death for him to realize it.