Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley

Eighteen-year-old Daunis’s mixed heritage has always made her feel like an outsider, both in her hometown and on the nearby Ojibwe reservation. When she witnesses a shocking murder, she reluctantly agrees to be part of a covert FBI operation into a series of drug-related deaths. But the deceptions – and deaths – keep piling up and soon the threat strikes too close to home. Now Daunis must decide what it means to be a strong Anishinaabe kwe (Ojibwe woman) and how far she’ll go to protect her community, even if it tears apart the only world she’s ever known.

FIRST IMPRESSION

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On a purely surface-level basis, I have a lot of reasons for championing this book.

• Publishing is less than 1% Indigenous, so I’m all for lifting up #ownvoices representation.
• The author, Angeline Boulley, was a full weekend warrior on this read, meaning that she worked in stolen fragments of time for over 10 years to make it happen. Respect to the hustle.
• The cover is one of my favorites of all time.

For the record, this book has done phenomenally since its publication. It’s a Reese’s Book Club pick, a Barnes & Noble teen book club pick, and is the first YA release in a while to reach the coveted No. 1 New York Times Bestseller spot as a debut. So my interest was piqued. I knew I was going to read it, but as soon as that news came out, I immediately dropped everything and drove to Barnes & Noble so that I could be in on the buzz.

OVERVIEW

Firekeeper’s Daughter was a five-star read for me.It’s now seared into my memory, and is also one that feels different than anything else I’ve read. Those two qualities tend to do it for me. Across the board, it did a great job. It was slow and steady, but had enough twists and distractions to keep me engaged. The characters were thoughtful and multi-faceted, the plotting was thorough and intense when it needed to be, and the emotional core of it was powerful. Additionally, as mentioned, it’s an Indigenous read that uses Native American Ojibwe language, culture, ritual, and history to complicate and inform each aspect of the story. I obviously can’t speak to the accuracy, but Angeline Boulley has a lovely note about how she never wanted to shy away from having them speak their language or acknowledge their customs, because it’s not catered to white readers. The community was real and visceral in a way that has been underrepresented in YA.

In my Reese’s Book Club review, I called it a tender thriller. Even now, that descriptor feels as distilled and accurate as I can possibly make it. They’re two variant tones, but Boulley infuses the flavor of each into the narrative. It has the twists and danger and grit of a thriller, but it’s also a warm and complicated coming-of-age, both on an individual basis (Daunis) and a collective basis (the community.) It was long, and for good reason. There were a lot of threads to develop, and yet they still all tied together at the end, so that was masterful.

I don’t normally read crime fiction, so I was shocked by how easily Angeline Boulley was able to create a plot revolving around meth. Most YA books of this nature shy away, but one scene quite literally has Daunis learning how to make it so that she can learn about its composition. That adds to my feeling of “I haven’t read anything else like this” in a way that was refreshing, informative, and endlessly fascinating.

I think where Firekeeper’s Daughter really excels is in the depth of connection to each character. I can normally call out when a book is flat, or appreciate when it’s complex, but I don’t even know how to convey how impressed I am by the realism of the web that Boulley weaves.

CHARACTERS

The complexity of the characters wow’d me. They felt distinctive and fleshed out and tough. Supporting characters, like the mom, had real undertones of grief and confusion that underscored (beautifully) the way they went about their lives. Daunis was resilient and lovely. She is memorable. She’s not necessarily one of the characters I would end-all obsess over, but she’s a solid girl with a strong character development arc. I loved how loyal she was to her family and how she navigated her coming-of-age choices.

My favorite aspect of her character was how seamlessly her science interest encapsulated both her Native knowledge of plants, chemistry, and spirituality, and her technical Western know-how. In undergrad, my specialty — the series of classes I most took to, at least, aside from art — was history of science. I spent one entire class researching how Western education failed and misrepresented the validity of Native science. Then I went on to make a print project visualizing it in my studio art minor, copied below. (Isn’t it great when interests overlap?!)

The science experiments embedded in the manuscript exemplified how most authors would have shied away from certain subject matter. Three pages on Daunis constructing an experiment over various species of mushrooms probably would have been edited out in most manuscripts — surely modern teens wouldn’t be captivated? But I appreciated how much credit Firekeeper’s Daughter gave to the maturity of the reader. I could see many teens I know appreciating the narrative, as well as many adults who normally scoff at YA.

The love interest, Jamie, was interesting enough but I don’t necessarily think he added all that much. I liked him, he was good enough to Daunis, and their relationship was both hopeful and realistic. The rest of the cast was dynamite, and I adored them.

PACING

It’s relatively slower in the beginning than most YA — which is why I think it feels more like an adult read, because YA requires a bit more of a shotgun — but I was perfectly fine with it. I think part of it was the care and intention that Boulley poured into representing the aspects of Daunis’s culture, and how it informed her life. She created a fully formed lens that informed how she would make her choices and develop as a character. So in this sense, it felt about as tight of a narrative as it could have been. It’s five hundred pages, but more than that, it deserves{' '}five hundred pages.

My favorite part of the pacing is that the ending feels like a true finale, which I can’t say I’ve had the luck of feeling in a while. Edge-of-your-seat, one-twist-after-another. It saves up all the momentum from earlier pages to make the ending truly explosive, causing it to feel cinematic and epic. In that sense, the plot finally and completely won me over. If you’re a reluctant reader but can push through the first, slower half, it’s immensely rewarding and satisfying. As I mentioned, I’m impressed by the tracks that Boulley led, and how she managed to wrap them up neatly. The last 100 pages are where the WOW factor came in.

CONS

My few (very irrelevant) issues with the book were apparent within the first chapter or two, and I was glad when those largely disappeared. For the most part, I thought the dialogue had a tendency to feel stiff and unrealistic. It was clear that the dialogue had a specific purpose rather than embodying the way characters were supposed to — or should have — talked. That was a small aspect that could occasionally yank me out of the narrative.

I also tend to dislike when authors capitalize a bunch of emotions or groups in order to make them seem important (the equivalent of having a named clique of popular kids in a book about high school — most of the time, it just feels like a cop-out or a way to feel clever.) New Normal made sense, but there were a few, like Guy Lies and one that I’m forgetting right at the beginning that just felt like they were using the capitalizations to Make Something Emphasized. I’m generally of the opinion that if a writer has to do that, it means their emphasis or distinction isn’t strong enough on its own. I’m not sure; it’s just a pet peeve.

I did guess the perpetrators pretty early on, so that wasn’t a shock to me, but for this particular book, I don’t think it needed to be. Firekeeper’s Daughter was about the how, not the who.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I’m impressed, and stunned, and had a bit of a book hangover after reading this one. It was inventive, compelling, respectful, and had flawed, warm characters I cared about. I’d highly recommend it, especially to those who normally scoff at YA (but how dare you.) It’s a winner, and I hope my readers appreciate it as much as I did.

As a note, a content warning if that is necessary or helpful for you — when I say this book pulls no punches, I mean it. There is sexual assault, gun violence, meth, and a lot of ugly subjects covered in this book. Over 4 out of 5 Native women experience violence in their lifetime.

A print from my class.