Firekeeper’s Daughter
Firekeeper’s Daughter Book Review by Angeline Boulley
Well, this book review came quicker than I thought it would (which after weeks since my last published review for an actual novel that may sound absurd, but I promise it isn’t).
There’s a lot of great things about this book and a lot of really important representation, but I also found it to be an incredible slog to trudge through.
Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley is the story of a girl by the name of Daunis Fontaine who finds herself stuck between two worlds: her Fontaine side, also known as her zhaaganaash or white side, and her Native side, or known as her Anishinaabe side, or even more specifically, Ojibwe side.
The debut novel from Boulley mainly describes Daunis’ struggle between these two worlds, the important people in them, and the war within herself to follow her heart, her gut, and her mind.
In the background of this identity struggle, or perhaps largely influenced by it, Daunis finds herself inexplicably tangled up in a secret federal investigation into a specific type of meth being produced in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula that affects people not only in her community, but other Native communities as well.
Suddenly finding herself becoming a spy, Daunis starts to learn and keep secrets, those in regards to the investigation as well as those regarding her feelings for fellow investigator-Jamie Johnson-an undercover narcotics cop posing as the cute new highschooler in town.
As Daunis deals with her own internal struggles, her community, her relationships, and her burgeoning romance, her past, future, and present all collide and come to a head in this new novel.
Now. Reading this summary, you might be thinking: this book sounds awesome! Love? Undercover cops? Drugs? Mystery? It has everything.
And you’d be right.
When I first read the jacket cover for this novel I knew it was a book I was inevitably going to read. Everything from the gorgeous cover art, to the intriguing summary, to the representation of Native Americans, I was completely drawn in.
Too bad I didn’t like it very much.
I will start off by saying that I think this book is incredible in its realistic depiction of the Ojibwe experience and I know how important it is to increase representation of all kinds of people and backgrounds in literature, especially YA literature.
Boulley did an absolutely stunning job of relaying the nitty-gritty of the Ojibwe community-the elders, the geography, the food, the stigma, the finances, the politics, the reputation, the racism, the prejudice, the community, the love, the healing, and so much more.
I always am in awe when authors utilize the golden rule of write what you know. Per the back jacket of the novel, Boulley herself states that she is an enrolled member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians and an active storyteller of the Ojibwe community.
This is beyond incredible. Having an accurate and active portrayal of people writing and drawing from their own experiences are powerful and significant. I could taste, feel, and see how clear and how real Boulley made the novel.
I questioned a lot of things during this read, but the Ojibwe community in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula was not one of them. From vocabulary to the extreme details depicting Sugar Island to the care and craft when talking about specific ceremonies like funerals, Boulley did an outstanding job of bringing in what she knows from her own experience and that of her community in order to breathe life into these pages.
This was by far the best part of the novel for me.
On the back jacket, Boulley also states that she was a former Director of the Office of Indian Education at the U.S. Department of Education. While I did not know this until a few minutes ago when I sat down to write this review, I am in no way surprised.
The book was extremely intelligent. I could viscerally tell that Boulley knows her stuff and does her research. Everything from biology and chemistry processes and vocabulary, to mushroom identification, to legal matters like having an underage informant, politics regarding becoming a member of the Ojibwe Tribe, and due process of the law regarding FBI cases was very clear cut, very detailed, and obviously very accurate.
I appreciated how much time and effort was put into this, even if I did find a lot of it bone dry and dull, I still could appreciate the time, effort, and knowledge to make sure that everything in the novel was precise and correct.
That being said, it also made the book come across almost like an informational pamphlet at times, or like I was reading non-fiction. I understand being accurate, and I applaud her for that, but I don’t need or want five pages of in-book description of how one of these processes work. Just give me the bare-bones outline and I will go from there and look it up more if I so desire.
This brings me to my first critique of this book and a large reason it was so tedious to get through: it was mind-numbingly long.
Now. I just read a 2,000 page fanfiction not that long ago. That is long, you could argue, and you would be right. But, none of All of the Young Dudes was a bore to get through (sad, sure, but not boring), whereas whole sections of Firekeeper’s Daughter were too dragged out and too explicitly explained that I inevitably got bored and nodded off.
The pace was too slow and too bogged down with unimportant details, like Daunis’ daily visits to the elders or her overthinking every single thing, or her making lists of all the things she doesn’t know (these are long lists).
She often spends whole pages grieving about her Uncle David as well as her best friend Lily, and while understandable and realistic in real life, it was not fun nor productive to read about over and over and over again.
Take for example, the very beginning of the book. It takes over 100 pages for Daunis to realize the new-boy-next-door isn’t who he says he is and that he’s actually an undercover cop here to investigate a new strain of meth and asks for her help.
Over 100 pages of set up.
It was so goddamn boring.
It got better once she became involved with the investigation, but then so did the whining, the overthinking, and the reflecting. The first 100 pages could have been condensed to 20. No joke, I would have gotten the same exposition out of that I did.
In addition, despite things taking so long or not serving a purpose, I was often confused about what was happening, which is an overall unpleasant experience. Boulley simultaneously describes everything and yet nothing at the same time.
The reason for this discrepancy is because she often used native language to describe feelings, events, people, etc and while some of the words I learned over time, often the words left me confused or bewildered.
I appreciate the use of native language, but it also left me with big gaps while reading or made me struggle to put pieces together as they were happening.
The pace of the novel overall was incredibly bad. Things either took 12 years or two minutes. The actual plot to show up? 12 Years. Daunis and Jamie to fall in love classic YA style? Two minutes. Daunis to find Uncle David’s notebook? 12 years. The final confrontation of the bad guys? Two minutes.
With any event, it either felt sluggish or way too quick and mashing these two together in one novel was disorienting and frustrating, not to mention it made me not want to read.
Additionally, while I generally thought the plot was very interesting, who doesn’t like undercover cop stories? I thought all of the characters were very forgettable or downright shells.
Daunis was...a textbook female character in my eyes. The way she spouted off knowledge like the periodic table to fall asleep or reciting the scientific method wasn’t cool or new, it was irritating.
To me she wasn’t real.
She was someone’s idea of a female character who seemed cool, but wasn’t. Nothing about Daunis made me think of her as a great character. If anything, she just seemed like an empty vessel I was reading the book through, like the book was happening to me instead (cough cough Mary Sue).
Some of you may be upset with this statement, and that’s fine, but other than her love of science, her knowledge of geography, and her ties to the community, nothing about Daunis was a real person.
She hardly had friends, I don’t recall learning anything she liked or disliked (other than Jamie, hockey, and running) , and she was entirely surmised of the people who had left her and the identity struggle she had been born with. I don’t mean to undermine people who struggle with their identity, I know that’s important, but there is more to people than just that.
None of the other characters are frankly worth mentioning.
You might ask, what about Jamie? The shadowy, scarred love interest?
*Shrugs*
He’s fine. Genuinely that’s all I can say about him. We don’t even learn his real name as Jamie Johnson is a fake. All I know is that he’s got curly hair, a scar, and doesn’t know who he is. It’s hard to like a character when the character themselves have no idea of who they are.
The other characters either die or are in the background to progress the plot along.
To be fair, it’s a good plot. It’s intriguing, it’s mysterious, and I learned more than I ever thought I would about meth and mushrooms, but it doesn’t make up for the dead-end characters or the pacing issues.
I didn’t hate it, but I also didn’t like it. I guess I can say that I feel indifferent about this book, although the representation of Native Americans bumps it up slightly for me from being dead average.
The storytelling isn’t spectacular, even if the idea is promising, but if you have been searching for representation like this in YA I can see how this book would be much more impactful and important and I’m happy to have it as a part of the YA collective.
Recommendation: At the end of the day, this novel is a true smorgasbord. I love the representation, the draws from Boulley’s real life, and the intelligence, but I didn’t see any of the characters as real people, the pacing issues made it hard to gain and keep interest going, and the dialogue often came across to me as someone's warped version of what teenager’s sound like.
Score: 6/10Score: 6/10
