This is a review of both books in the Firekeeper’s Daughter series.
In the first in the series, The Firekeeper’s Daughter, Daunis Fontaine is a biracial high school senior who’s never fit in with either her white family or her father’s Sugar Land Ojibwa tribe. She’s looking forward to new start at a college away from home. Her plans change when her uncle’s death devastates her family and when she witnesses a the murder of her best friend. When Daunis witnesses a murder, she is recruited as an FBI informant. Deaths and subterfuges pile up making Daunis doubt all she knows about herself and her family. Several overlapping plot lines add intrigue to the story and keep the pacing hot.
The second novel, Warrior Girl Unearthed, occurs five years later. Daunis has a child, and her twin nieces are sixteen. Pauline Firekeeper-Birch is an anxiety-ridden “good girl” while Perry, nicknamed “Pulls No Punches,” is the hot-headed protagonist. When she crashes her jeep, her aunt Daunis covers the repairs, but Perry has to pay her back from funds earned during a ten-week summer program sponsored by the tribe. Initially working at a tribal museum, her impetuosity leads to her being shifted from there to other assignments. At a local university, Perry learns about an ancestor whose bones and knife are stored in museum archives. This experience sets off her desire to return the “Warrior Girl” to her tribe. As with The Firekeeper’s Daughter, there are multiple plot lines, including one about MMIW (missing and murdered indigenous woman). Perry must learn to think before acting and realize that sometimes following the rules is the best way to move forward.
The Firekeeper’s Daughter series is a great series for readers that love being immersed in new worlds. The author, Angeline Boulley, is an enrolled member of the Sault Saint Marie Ojibwe tribe, and her knowledge of that milieu features prominently in her novels. Her careful attention to cultural details add a verisimilitude that can’t be fully captured by writers less versed in tribal ways, including the effects of drugs and alcohol, reservation casinos, the claiming of tribal lands by the American government, and how jurisdiction over crimes is split between Native police and US agencies like the FBI, lead to an inability to get justice especially with MMIW victims. As the novels deal with adult-type issues (racial prejudice, rape, kidnapping, drugs, and alcohol), I’d recommend it for upper grade young adult readers.
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The Firekeeper’s Daughter (Henry Holt and Co., ) is available through:
Your local independent bookseller | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
Warrior Girl Unearthed (Henry Holt and Co., ) is available through:
Your local independent bookseller | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
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