Firekeeper's Daughter
Angeline Boulley
Henry Holt and Co.
Fiction, YA Mystery/Thriller
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Daunis Fontaine of upper Michigan was born with a foot in two worlds, never feeling she belonged in either. Her mother's family is old money (and very white), while her late father was from the local Ojibwe, the prominent Firekeeper family. She tries to honor her Native American heritage as best she can, but, not being technically enrolled, she still feels too often like an outsider looking in. Now eighteen, she plans to earn a degree, maybe even a doctorate, pursuing a love of science.
When her grandmother suffers a debilitating stroke, Daunis decides to defer her enrollment for a year, studying at the local college instead to help support her fragile mother. It won't be all that bad; she'll get to go to classes with her best friend since forever, Lily. And there's a new boy in town, Jamie, who's not only easy on the eyes but great on a hockey rink (hockey being Daunis's second great love after science). But he's oddly vague about his past, and has a way of asking far more questions than he ever answers. After tragedy strikes, taking Lily and her estranged boyfriend Travis in a single terrible moment, Daunis learns that Jamie and his "uncle" are undercover FBI agents, investigating a meth ring that's been devastating the local kids, white and Ojibwe alike. Jamie wants Daunis to become a confidential informant, using her insider and local knowledge to help them ferret out the criminals. She has mixed feelings; on the one hand, nobody can deny the damage meth has been doing to the community, but on the other it feels like betrayal to use her friendships and family bonds like this, on behalf of a government that hasn't exactly been friendly with her father's people since forever. Once again, Daunis finds herself forced to walk with a foot in two worlds. If she succeeds, she'll do immeasurable good, but if she fails, she wouldn't be the first informant to die...
REVIEW: This book has been getting plenty of praise from plenty of sources, and it mostly lives up to the hype. Daunis presents a strong face to the world, but inwardly is still struggling to find a balance between the various opposing forces of her life: a mother who never got over the death of Daunis's father and who crumbles in the face of change, a grandmother who tried to raise her as white as possible and never truly accepted her Native American heritage, a tribe that she strives to be part of that nevertheless often seems to hide certain parts of itself from her, and more. She has plenty of friends and family, and a few rivals, but almost nobody is flat or stereotypical, with inner complexities that blend good and bad and truth and lies. The setting and the characters feel alive on the page, the traditions and stories and landscape richly described without being verbose or tedious. As Daunis is pulled into the FBI investigation, she learns truths about people she's known all her life that she'd rather not have known, even as she tries to find a balance between helping find the meth dealers and protecting her community from federal agents who clearly do not know or care about the wrecking ball their work will almost inevitably swing into their lives; where she sees a whole body in need of healing, they see only a tumor to be tracked down and excised with as big a scalpel as possible. Her relationship with Jamie is even more complicated, not just due to the very real feelings that spark with a man she literally does not know the real name of; he's struggling, too, a young man of Native American descent who was taken and adopted out to white parents (as far too many were) and who has no idea how to find his own people, let alone if they'd want him back. It's unclear at times how much he sees Daunis as herself and how much he sees her as a possible way into a tribal way of life he was denied. Meanwhile, the investigation wends through the local Ojibwe and hockey communities, with more casualties along the way and several dead ends and false turns and close calls before coming to a tense and satisfactory conclusion.
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