Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley Book Review

      






Written by Angeline Boulley

Published by Henry Holt and Co. (BYR) in 2021

ISBN:978-1250766564

Plot Summary: Daunis Fontaine is a mixed race child from her mother's French/Italian side and her father's Ojibwe side. Daunis has a very hard family life with lots of illness and death and she finds herself in the middle of a tough situation where someone is making meth and is distributing it to her people as well as the school around her. She becomes an informant for the police as she is very ingrained with the people at her school and she finds out that it is her brother and his hockey team friends who are the ones that are making and distributing it and she is kidnapped by the Tribal Judge who has a part in the operation. Daunis realizes that she wants to help people so she decides to go to college at the University of Hawaii where she is able to research ethnobotany and traditional medicine just like her ancestors did for many years. 

Critical Analysis (Including Cultural Markers): Daunis is the main character throughout the story and you can tell that she is always working hard to become better and it becomes apparent that she is on a hero's journey where she is able to bust up the drug ring as well as discover more about who she is with her personal growth and finding her place in the world. Daunis goes through a journey of reconciliation within herself as she feels that her mother's heritage and father's heritage will never be in sync within her so she doesn't feel like she is a part of either of them. The conflict shows us in Daunis love of science as well as her love of her father's traditional Native medicine but she is pushed away because she is not fully Native. 

Daunis knows that she has a responsibility to her community as a Native person but she also feels drawn to being an informant as she wants to get the drugs off the street and away from her community as well. Daunis is faced with many difficult decisions as she must balance prioritizing helping the FBI in their investigation vs. protecting people that she believes are innocent in the whole situation. Daunis spends a lot of time trying to see people for who they are as a whole person and not letting their actions define who they are as a person. She learns that she must trust her gut feelings and also her sense of self which develops throughout the story. Daunis learns when she must be a Fontaine and when she must be the firekeeper throughout the story and she feels like she is denying part of herself throughout the whole story as the line becomes blurred in tricky situations. 

Review: Kirkus Review 

Testing the strength of family bonds is never easy—and lies make it even harder.

Daunis is trying to balance her two communities: The Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, teen is constantly adapting, whether she is with her Anishinaabe father’s side of the family, the Firekeepers, or the Fontaines, her White mother’s wealthy relatives. She has grand plans for her future, as she wants to become a doctor, but has decided to defer her plans to go away for college because her maternal grandmother is recovering from a stroke. Daunis spends her free time playing hockey with her Firekeeper half brother, Levi, but tragedy strikes, and she discovers someone is selling a dangerous new form of meth—and the bodies are piling up. While trying to figure out who is behind this, Daunis pulls away from her family, covering up where she has been and what she has been doing. While dealing with tough topics like rape, drugs, racism, and death, this book balances the darkness with Ojibwe cultural texture and well-crafted characters. Daunis is a three-dimensional, realistically imperfect girl trying her best to handle everything happening around her. The first-person narration reveals her internal monologue, allowing readers to learn what’s going on in her head as she encounters anti-Indian bias and deals with grief.

A suspenseful tale filled with Ojibwe knowledge, hockey, and the politics of status. (Thriller. 14-18)


Connection: Students can learn more about the Ojibwe people and their customs at this website: 

https://www.mnhs.org/fortsnelling/learn/native-americans/ojibwe-people

Another book by Angeline Boulley

Warrior Girl Unearthed  ISBN: 978-0861544226









Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Free Lunch Book Review by Rex Ogle

Image
Written By Rex Ogle Published by Norton Young Readers in 2019 ISBN: 978-1324003601 Plot Summary: This is a memoir of Rex Ogle when he was in 6th grade. He was enrolled in the free lunch program at school as he was living in poverty at the time. The story begins with his mom Luciana in the grocery store as they are shopping for food but they only have so many dollars in food stamps that they can use. Rex remembers how angry he is that he never gets to choose food that he likes and both he and his mom are embarrassed as they didn't have enough money for the food that they chose so they only walk out with one bag of groceries even though they had chosen much more than that. Rex is anxious about going to school as he doesn't want the other kids to know that he was on the free lunch program and when he questions his mom she beats him and gives him a black eye which he has to explain away at the school. Rex has to announce that he has free lunch in the line which embarasses him even
Read more

Scythe by Neal Shusterman Book Review

Image
  Written By: Neal Shusterman Published By: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers in 2017 ISBN: 978-1442472433 Plot Summary: The year is 2042 and artificial intelligence has become alive and thinks for itself and has created a network called the Thunderhead. As it knows all, it has figured out how to keep humans alive indefinitely. The problems of how to feed and shelter everyone is still an issue so a job is created called being a Scythe. They are required to kill a certain number of people to balance the scales. Two teenagers are training to be a Scythe and their names are Citra and Rowan. They are supposed to both be trained and then one is chosen while the other goes back to their normal life. Other Scythes decide though that whoever wins has to kill the other as their first kill. Their trainer pretends to kill himself so they are sent to train under other scythes. Citra finds out that their original trainer is still alive and creates a plan to make everything work out for h
Read more

The Surrender Tree by Margarita Engle Book Rev

Image
   Written by Margarita Engle  Published by Square Fish in 2010  ISBN: 978-0312608712 Plot Summary: The book is based on Rosario Castellanos Castellanos who is a famous person in Cuban American history. She was a freed slave who works as a nurse for the rebels who are fighting against the Spanish in the mid to late 1800's in Cuba. The poems are free verse and are written from the perspective of 4 different people: Rosa, Jose her husband, a slave hunter named Lieutenant Death in the story, and a girl named Sylvia. The novel is written in 5 different parts that cover Rosa's story from childhood to adulthood.  The first part is titled "The Names of the Flowers" and is talks about how Rosa grows up in the field amd learns about the healing properties of different plants and herbs from the women. Rosa helps to heal runaway slaves who have been beaten after running away and this is where she meets Teniente Muerte otherwise known as Lieutenant Death. The Lieutenant doesn'
Read more