Firekeeper’s Daughter
by Angeline Boulley
High School    Holt    496 pp.    g
3/21    978-1-250-76656-4    $18.99
e-book ed.  978-1-250-76657-1    $10.99

Recent high school graduate Daunis Firekeeper (known for much of the book by her white mother’s family name, Fontaine) decides to stay in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and attend Lake State with her best friend, Lily. She is then ­devastated when Lily is killed by her meth-addicted boyfriend. Soon after, two undercover agents approach Daunis about taking her late uncle’s place as a confidential informant investigating meth that included “hallucinogenic additives…Psilocybe caerulipes from near Tahquamenon Falls.” Daunis has strong scientific knowledge and a close connection to the Native community, despite being unenrolled (her father, a member of the Sugar Island Ojibwe tribe, is not on her birth certificate). Readers are introduced to the Anishinaabemowin language and, as Daunis calls on traditional knowledge to assist her in the investigation alongside her scientific knowledge, to the customs of the Sugar Island Ojibwe. This is a gripping page-turner, multifaceted, authentic, and suspenseful, that will keep readers wondering who is responsible for the meth that is taking over Daunis’s community — and who exactly she can trust.

From the May/June 2021 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.