Erdrich is a prolific American author born in 1954 in Little Falls, Minnesota. She is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and refers to herself as Ojibwa and Anishinaabe. She also has German and French heritage.

At the time of the publication of “The Leap,” Erdrich had already published three novels: Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, and Tracks. Erdrich’s novels are frequently set on an Ojibwa reservation near the fictional town of Argus, North Dakota, and while “The Leap” takes place in an unnamed town in New Hampshire, the narrator alludes to having a “failed life where the land is flat” somewhere “in the West” (Paragraphs 15, 4)—which could well be the Dakotas. Erdrich’s works also feature recurring characters and motifs and an interest in following the consequences of experiences and stories across generations and throughout communities. The narrator’s deeply invested retelling of her mother’s history in “The Leap” is an example.

Erdrich often incorporates her short stories into her novels or publishes parts of her novels as short standalone pieces. “The Leap” later appeared (with some modification and expansion) as part of Erdrich’s 1996 novel Tales of Burning Love, in which the narrator and three other women tell each other stories amid a life-threatening blizzard.