The Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley

 

The Firekeeper’s Daughter

By Angeline Boulley
Walter Award Winner
Ages 14+, grades 9+

Summary

Daunis Fontaine is fresh out of high school and enjoying her last summer before jumping into the university-to-med-school pipeline. Hers hasn’t been an easy road: she’s a biracial anishinaabekwe-- half-Ojibwe woman-- and though she identifies with her native roots and family, she remains an unregistered tribal member due to the scandal surrounding her birth and her father’s death a few years later. More recently her maternal uncle died under mysterious circumstances and her grandmother had a stroke, leaving her single mother the fragile care-taker of a family legacy. These circumstances already have Daunis conflicted about leaving when she meets Jamie, the charming new recruit for her brother’s hockey team. However, deaths begin to pile up around her and she learns there is more to Jamie than she bargained for. Daunis is recruited to help expose a new ring of corruption and drug manufacturing within her community, and in doing so may clarify the circumstance of her uncle’s death. But the opportunity comes with a level of risk and secrecy that Daunis isn’t sure she can navigate within the bounds of her own ethics and commitment to her community.

Justification

I was initially drawn to this book by its breathtaking cover art by Ojibwe artist Moses Lunham. It beautifully reflects Daunis’ internal struggle with her biracial identity through the mirrored face of a native woman, surrounded by indigenous design. The summary called to mind another much older work of Native American YA literature, Monkey Beach, that I enjoyed immensely both for its representation of a culture I am largely unfamiliar with, and for the themes of mysticism therein. Similar themes exist within The Firekeeper’s Daughter, however, they are presented alongside stronger themes of tradition, community, and belonging, as well as darker themes of racism, drug use and addiction, rape, and death. This makes for a more complex, albeit sometimes harder to believe, story than I remember in Monkey Beach, but one that nonetheless offers an engaging and suspenseful narrative within a setting grounded in truth as Angeline Boulley draws on her own Ojibwe upbringing in the story’s site of Sault St. Marie, Michigan.

Response

From the get-go, I appreciated the character of Daunis - she is brilliant-minded and strong (she is described as nearly six feet tall and athletically built), while also showing all the social uncertainties and occasional lapses of logic and judgement appropriate of an 18-year-old in a time of transition. The dialogue feels natural, and shifts appropriately based on the relationship between each set of characters. It is full of dialectical patterns and cultural quirks that Boulley gets to explore from both the Ojibwe and non-indigenous perspectives, as Daunis explores and embraces both parts of herself. I also found it impossible to not relish in the vivid descriptions of Ojibwe culture. The clothing, prayers, music, food, and traditional beliefs presented in the story are described beautifully, conveying a consistent sense of deep meaning and sacredness. Finally, I love that it all tied together into an overarching theme of multigenerational wisdom, support, and belonging alongside that of forging one’s own path in truth.

Boulley, A. (2021). The Firekeeper’s daughter. Henry Holt.