"The Red Convertible" is a short story by American author Louise Erdrich. The story and its characters draw heavily on the author's own partial Native American background: Erdrich is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and grew up on a Chippewa reservation in North Dakota, as did the protagonist/narrator, Lyman, and his family.
The story was written in 1974, just after the end of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Lyman's brother, Henry, is drafted into the military and deployed to Vietnam. He returns a changed man: once Lyman's best friend, he is now distant and even "jumpy and mean." This hints that he might be suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, a mental condition common among veterans (especially Vietnam veterans) which causes heightened reactions, severe anxiety, flashbacks, depression, and aggression. The issues touched on in the story are particularly relevant to Native Americans living on reservations, as they suffer disproportionately from mental illness and suicide, due mostly to a lack of available resources and a lack of access to medical/mental health care.
"The Red Convertible" was published in 1984 as part of Erdrich's first "novel", Love Medicine, which was structured as a series of narratives spanning 60 years in the lives of a small group of Chippewa on a reservation. Each story/chapter is told from the point of view of one of the characters, with some characters narrating more than one chapter. "The Red Convertible" was also re-published in a 2009 collection titled The Red Convertible: Selected and New Stories, 1978-2008.
