Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline BoulleyMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Honestly, I think part of the huge buzz about this excellent book is that eager readers are ready to sign up for whatever comes next from this author. The story is told through the perspective of Daunis Fontaine, an eighteen-year-old college freshman. Her coming-of-age story is seamlessly woven into a masterfully plotted mystery, for a read that's satisfying on all levels. Though the book was selected for Reese Witherspoon's YA Bookclub, it has great crossover appeal for older adults: for readers of Frederick Backman’s Beartown certainly, and especially for readers who’ve enjoyed Hillerman's Leaphorn and Chee, Bowen's Montana Métis mysteries, and Stabenow's Kate Shugak stories.
When writing about contemporary Native Americans, one must address poverty and prejudice, but this is not an "issues" book, nor is it preachy in any way. Those aren’t the basics of Native culture, they’re social influences. This book has everything in addition to poverty and prejudice: mystery, murder, sports, love, faith—and the indomitable spirit and character of the young Ojibwe woman and the community at its center. It was an honor to be invited into the heart of this community. One of the reasons I love this character so much is that she feels like a portrait of all the Native women the author has known and loved. I see in Daunis something of all the Native women I have known and loved, also.
Daunis walks between two worlds, that of her Native heritage and her white heritage, but it's a bit easier to fit in to the indigenous community; in the white world, even though her grandparents are rich, she's illegitimate. She's more accepted in the Ojibwe community, but she's not enrolled in the tribe and gets some flak there as well. She's set to go away to college but her uncle recently died and she decides to do her first year at the local community college to stay close to her fragile mom.
Her hockey star half-brother is in his senior year, and when she notices a bit too much about the new guy on the team, Daunis is recruited to an undercover investigation of a new kind of meth that's been showing up in the Upper Peninsula. Deception isn't natural to Daunis, and at first she refuses. But then tragedy strikes very close and she changes her mind. Using her science skills, her own hockey star background and her access to the community, she dances ever closer to danger.
It's such a pleasure to read a book that has such great characters, setting, and pacing. I'm hoping that this is the beginning of a series, but for whatever Angeline Boulley writes next, I'm impatiently waiting. Thank you, Ms. Boulley, for following your dream of writing. Highly recommended.
View all my reviews
