Review: Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley
Photo by Zhisheng Deng on Unsplash
Synopsis:
Eighteen-year-old Daunis Fontaine has never quite fit in, both in her hometown and on the nearby Ojibwe reservation. She dreams of a fresh start at college, but when family tragedy strikes, Daunis puts her future on hold to look after her fragile mother. The only bright spot is meeting Jamie, the charming new recruit on her brother Levi’s hockey team. Yet even as Daunis falls for Jamie, she senses the dashing hockey star is hiding something. Everything comes to light when Daunis witnesses a shocking murder, thrusting her into an FBI investigation of a lethal new drug.
Reluctantly, Daunis agrees to go undercover, drawing on her knowledge of chemistry and Ojibwe traditional medicine to track down the source. But the search for the truth is more complicated than Daunis imagined, exposing secrets and old scars. At the same time, she grows concerned with an investigation that seems more focused on punishing the offenders than protecting the victims. Now, as the deceptions—and deaths—keep growing, Daunis must learn what it means to be a strong Anishinaabe kwe (Ojibwe woman) and how far she’ll go for her community, even if it tears apart the only world she’s ever known.
An absolutely breathtaking debut.
“I began as a secret, and then a scandal.”
This is one of my favorite books of the year. Technically it’s considered YA, but it’s so much more than that; the topics that Boulley touches on are universal and extremely relevant. At its heart, it’s really a coming-of-age-story about a young woman who has a deep abiding love for her community and her culture.
I don’t want to give too much of the plot away, but suffice to say, Boulley does an amazing job at creating a slow-burn mystery, and characters with great depth. Don’t come here looking for a fast-paced thriller. Boulley takes her time introducing us to the Ojibwe culture and Daunis’ life, so it does start off a bit slow, but the payoff is definitely worth it.
What I found most compelling was Daunis’ trying to find acceptance with either side of her family. She’s biracial; her mother is white, from one of the wealthy founding families of Sault Ste. Marie; her father was from one of the influential Native families of Sugar Island. She is an unenrolled member of the tribe, and the push and pull from her two families is her main issue. At times she feels too Indian, at others, not Indian enough.
My mother’s side of the family is Mexican, but we’re also Native. Without getting too much into it, my great-great grandmother was kidnapped from her tribe, and she married the son of a hacienda owner. We don’t know what tribe she’s from; she refused to talk about her childhood, either because the family didn’t want her to or because she found it too painful. Regardless, that part of her story is forever lost, and so is a part of my culture.
All this is to say, I really related to Daunis’ identity struggle. It was heartening to read about someone going through the exact same thing, and it’s one of the strongest parts of the novel. I am also seen as not “enough”; not Mexican enough, not Native enough, not Jewish enough, you name it. I want to be proud of all these different parts of my identity, but I’ve found that people find it hard to comprehend. It’s almost as if the world is saying, “You can’t claim everything, so you are nothing.”
“It’s hard when being Native means different things depending on who’s asking and why…It’s your identity, but it gets defined or controlled by other people.”
There has been a lot of hype about this book, and when that happens, there’s always the danger of the reality falling short of the built up expectations. But that’s not the case here. This book is fantastic and gut-wrenching, and a must-read for everyone. The writing is pitch-perfect; Boulley goes into such rich detail about Ojibwe culture, but she weaves this in with the larger narrative, so it never feels overwhelming or overly-expository. The story is paced well, and once the Daunis’ investigation really got going, I was hooked and couldn’t put it down. Boulley packs a lot into her debut, and the themes she develops are more relevant now than ever.
This book is such a gift, and I can’t wait to read what Boulley writes next.
Content Warning: Racism, colorism, drug addiction, drug use, gun violence, murder, sexual assault, rape, grief, slut shaming.