Firekeeper’s Daughter

Angeline Boulley’s stunning debut novel, Firekeeper’s Daughter, is a YA thriller and #OwnVoices tale about a biracial teen caught up in an investigation on an Ojibwe reservation.

Eighteen-year-old Daunis Fontaine is torn between two worlds, those of her white mother’s wealthy community and her late father’s nearby Ojibwe reservation. Daunis isn’t even recognized as a tribal member because her father was left off her birth certificate, although she still feels a strong pull toward her Firekeeper identity. As she starts her freshman year of college, she has an opportunity to get away from the problems of reservation life—poverty, violence, and prejudice. But then she meets the handsome new Native hockey player, Jamie Johnson, who seems to be hiding something. When Daunis witnesses the shocking murder of an Ojibwe teen, she is brought into an undercover investigation that has the potential to either heal the community she loves or tear it apart.

Firekeeper’s Daughter brings something new to the crime fiction genre. Boulley’s powerful and dynamic characters offer readers a nuanced view of tribal communities, weaving Ojibwe traditions and culture into a tense and well-paced story.