Hi all, sorry for the quiet this week. It was a busy one at my day job and I am just now getting to checking on the blog. No tea today, hopefully next time!
I finished The Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley, which was Boulley’s debut novel and absolutely worth a read!
Firekeeper’s Daughter, follows Daunis Fontaine who is the daughter of a well to-do mother in Sault Sainte Marie and her father was a member of the Sault Sainte Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. Do to Daunis being a product of a teenage pregnancy, her father Levi was not listed on her birth certificate so she isn’t officially a part of the tribe till towards the end of the book.
The book is exploring the issue of Drugs being trafficked through the reservation as well as why a special blend of Coke was being found only on reservations. Daunis is recruited by the FBI to be an inside source since she was still involved in all of the tribal activities, even though she was not an official member of the tribe for the majority of the book.
You follow Daunis as she interacts with other tribe members, constantly wondering if they were involved in the drug ring and the killings that keep happening on Sugar Island. We get to see into Daunis’s love of Hockey and for her younger brother Levi who is only a few months younger than her. They share the majority of their friend group due to their age, however, it seems like Levi is hiding things from Daunis which was a new thing that wasn’t like it had been while they were growing up.
This book explores some heavy themes, and so go into it with the following warnings, and though it represents real life experiences that Native American Tribes deal with across North America and Canada, it does need to be menetiond: CW/TW: Murder, Drugs, Drug Addiction, Domestic Abuse, Rape, Sexual Assault, and Death of a Family memebr.
While most of this book I forgot that it was actually a Thriller, it sucks you into the story and you can’t help but feel Daunis’s pain as she loses people in her life, it’s beautiful writing, hard to believe it is a debut! If you are new to Thrillers, like me, I feel like this is the perfect one to start with! Boulley is also a member of the real life Sault Sainte Marie Tribe, so this is a perfect book for IndgAThon.
Till next time,
Kaitlyn
Kaitlyn's Literary Teahouse 