Review: Firekeeper's Daughter

Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'll admit, I made the mistake of thinking this one was a fantasy novel at first due in part to the style of its cover art (that the title is written in a near-identical font to the one used by Leigh Bardugo on Six of Crows, from the same publisher no less, doesn't help), as well as its title (to which I kept mentally adding "The" at the start when it's not actually there). But this Reese Witherspoon-approved YA thriller is a real curveball in a lot of ways. Not only is it pretty well-rooted in the author's background as an Ojibwe woman, not only does it deal very frankly with issues of drug dealing and abuse on the reservation and the ways in which main character Daunis, being mixed race, is truly torn between two worlds, but it's also very subtly set in the mid-2000s. While not the first recent YA contemporary to be set in that particular near-past period (Tahereh Mafi's set two novels there so far), Boulley is careful to not actually reveal this until Daunis finally says around page 250 or so that her senior year began in 2003. Until then, she lets certain subtext - such as the ways all the teenagers' cell phones still have minutes, and they text in the sort of shorthand that's long since gone extinct except for when my buddy Koda messages me - do all the heavy lifting. I'm glad this book is getting as much push as it has - my local library put it on a pretty prominent table in the front, which is where I found it - because it deserves it.

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