135 pages • 4 hours read
Firekeeper's Daughter
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2021
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Introduction
Firekeeper’s Daughter
- Genre: Fiction; young adult thriller
- Originally Published: 2021
- Reading Level/Interest: Lexile HL720L; grades 10-12
- Structure/Length: 4 parts; 57 chapters; approx. 496 pages; approx. 14 hours, 13 minutes on audio
- Protagonist and Central Conflict: Eighteen-year-old Daunis Fontaine, who has a French mother and an Ojibwe father, witnesses a murder and reluctantly uses her knowledge of both cultures to help the FBI investigate the case.
- Potential Sensitivity Issues: Drug abuse, suicide, rape, relationship abuse
Angeline Boulley, Author
- Bio: Lives in Michigan; graduated from Central Michigan University; member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians; formerly worked as the Director of the Office of Indian Education at the U.S. Department of Education; her father is a traditional Firekeeper
- Awards: Printz Award (2022); William C. Morris YA Debut Award (2022); American Indian Youth Literature Young Adult Honor Book (2022)
CENTRAL THEMES connected and noted throughout this Teaching Unit:
- The Individual’s Responsibility in the Community
- Seeing Someone’s “Whole Story”
- Trusting One’s Sense of Self
STUDY OBJECTIVES: In accomplishing the components of this Unit, students will:
- Gain an understanding of the historical and social contexts surrounding elements of Ojibwe culture, the crucial backdrop against which Daunis’s conflict plays out.
- Study short paired texts and other resources to make connections via the text’s themes of Community, Trusting One’s Sense of Self, and Seeing the “Whole Story.
