A review by ericawrites
Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley

4.0

 This thriller follows Daunis, an 18-year-old preparing for her first year of college, as everything around her in her small hometown and nearby Ojibwe reservation changes. When we meet her, Daunis has recently lost her uncle (she believes to meth), and her grandmother has had a debilitating stroke. She changes her college plans to stay closer to her mother, grandmother, and best friend, Lily. Daunis is also trying to get her citizenship within the tribe (her Ojibwe father was not on her birth certificate), and she’s studying traditional Indigenous medicines and plants with a keen understanding of chemistry and medicine.

I learned a ton about Ojibwe culture, practices, and traditions, and I appreciated and loved many of those moments. But I did wonder if this book would read as an explainer to non-Ojibwe people to someone of that background or a related one. (As a trans person, I’ve certainly read books featuring trans people and community where they felt like they explained something to cis people over letting the scene be natural to the trans person.) This was also a YA book, so sometimes, explainers come with the target demographic.

In many ways, this book is overwritten and beautiful simultaneously. Around 100 pages could’ve been cut, and while I understand Boulley wanting to address the rampant SA of Indigenous women, the late in the story sexual assault of Daunis felt unnecessary to the plot.

Daunis sometimes felt “not like the other girls” in her attitude and interests. She’s into science and hockey and doesn’t care much about a party where she can wear a fancy dress and makeup. She also dislikes and slut shames the teenage girls who follow the high school boy's hockey team that Daunis played on. While Daunis has a strong connection to her aunt, she also sees her mother as too fragile to deal with her daughter’s problems, and (SPOILER) the death of Lily leaves out a connection with another girl. Instead, she’s mainly around Jamie, her male love interest, her brother, and the rest of the almost all-male hockey team.

The thriller certainly got the most interesting in the last 20% with dramatic actions and betrayals that I saw coming and did not. Daunis spends most of the book working with two FBI agents as they try to unravel who is dealing meth in the community and the surrounding area. Daunis’ connection to the people and the land gives her greater insights into the case, but they also shield her from the truth and some people’s motives and beliefs about her.

Firekeeper's Daughter had an immensely satisfying ending for all the threads Boulley built up over the story.