Will Louise Erdrich win a Nobel Prize?

And speaking of Nobel Prizes, I hold to my prediction that Louise Erdrich will be the next American (and 1st Native American) to win the prize, based on her nearly 20 works of fiction and poetry, most of them portraying the life among Native Americans int he contemporary Northwest. Her story, The Stone, in the current New Yorker is somewhat atypical, not one of her greatest works, but a thoughtful and at times moving short story that encompasses the lifespan of the protagonist: A young woman on annual family summer vacation on a Lake Superior island finds an unusual rock that has the appearance of a human face; she brings the rock home w/ her and keeps the rock throughout her life - it's a talisman and at times a sex toy and always a kind of security blanket, helping her through tough times but also limiting and restricting her in some odd way. The woman, for example, becomes a successful concert pianist - and she brings the rock on stage w/ her at every performance; she becomes known for this eccentricity. The rock - as rocks tend to be - is steady, but her life is not; her marriage fails, and we sense that her weird obsession w/ this rock was part of the break-up. In one key passage in the story, Erdrich steps back and gives us the history of the rock, its origin as part of a volcanic eruption 3 billion years ago and its travel into and through human history - the woman of this story was not the first to notice the features of this rock and to keep it as a possession - which makes us think in the widest terms possible about life on Earth, not just human and not just organic but all forms of life and their endurance and interaction. We know, in a sense, little about the protagonist - we don't even know here she lives, and if she has a name I've forgotten it already - but we see her both as representative of all people and also as a sad and lonely soul whose troubles were never recognized (let alone treated) and whose life has slipped past her.