Sisters in the Wind

Angeline Boulley’s 2025 young adult thriller, Sisters in the Wind, follows 18-year-old Lucy Dolce Smith, a member of the Anishinaabe community who experienced abuse as a child ward of the state. Lucy’s precarious adult independence is shattered by a diner bombing. As she recovers from this experience, she comes into the care of Daunis Fontaine, the best friend of Lucy’s deceased half-sister. Plunged into a world of new dangers and family secrets, Lucy must navigate her traumatic past to reclaim her identity and protect her future. The novel alternates the timeline of 18-year-old Lucy with her experiences as a teenager in an abusive state guardianship system. The novel explores themes including The System’s Betrayal of Vulnerable Children, Reclaiming Identity and Family, and Navigating a World of Secrets and Lies.

Sisters in the Wind is a companion novel to Boulley’s highly decorated previous works, Firekeeper’s Daughter (2021) and Warrior Girl Unearthed (2023), and is set in 2009, within the same semi-fictional setting and context: Daunis Fontaine and Jamie Jameson are returning fictional characters from Firekeeper’s Daughter. Like Boulley’s previous novels, Sisters in the Wind is deeply engaged with the political and cultural history of Indigenous communities, particularly the real-world legal struggles surrounding the application of the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978. As an enrolled member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, Boulley draws on her heritage and her professional background in Indigenous education to explore contemporary Anishinaabe life.

Boulley’s debut, Firekeeper’s Daughter, was a number one New York Times bestseller and received numerous honors, including the Michael L. Printz Medal and the William C. Morris Award. Sisters in the Wind was nominated as a Goodreads Choice in 2025.

This guide is based on the 2025 Henry Holt and Company edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain depictions of child abuse, child sexual abuse, substance use, graphic violence, illness or death, physical abuse, emotional abuse, suicide, and racism.

Plot Summary

In 2009, 18-year-old Lucy Dolce Smith works as a server in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, where she is approached by a handsome Indigenous man named John Jameson. He introduces himself as an attorney who helps former foster children with Indigenous heritage reconnect with their birth families. Feeling suspicious because she feels someone has been stalking her recently, Lucy confronts him. He mistakenly calls her “Lily” and leaves a business card for his organization, Raven Air Associates. Believing she is in danger, Lucy plans to flee town after her shift the next day. At the diner, her coworkers Nancy and Tim celebrate Lucy’s six-month work milestone. During celebrations, a bomb explodes in the kitchen. As an injured Nancy loses consciousness, she tells Lucy, “You look just like your mother” (18). Lucy wakes in the hospital and overhears Jameson speaking with a woman named Daunis Fontaine. Daunis knows him well and calls him “Jamie.” Lucy learns that Daunis was the best friend of Lily, Lucy’s deceased older half-sister of whom she was unaware. Daunis and Jamie discuss how a DNA test has confirmed Lucy as Lily’s half-sister.

The narrative shifts to flashbacks of Lucy’s past. Aged six, Lucy is raised by her devout Catholic father, Luke Smith, and knows little about her birth mother. After a security guard racially profiles her as Indigenous, her father denies Lucy’s Indigenous heritage. When Lucy is 12, Luke, struggling with colorectal cancer, marries Lucy’s strict math teacher, Bridget Mapother, who later adopts her. Two months after the adoption, Luke dies during surgery. After his death, Bridget’s personality changes drastically. She spends lavishly on luxury goods and drains the college fund that Luke had established for Lucy. When Lucy is 14, she discovers that Bridget has spent this money. During a heated confrontation, Bridget slaps Lucy and makes remarks about her “no-good” Indigenous mother. In a rage, Lucy runs away and uses fireworks to blow up Bridget’s storage unit, which contains thousands of dollars’ worth of designer items.

In the hospital after the bombing, Daunis formally introduces herself to Lucy and reveals that Lucy’s birth mother, Maggie Chippeway, is alive and wants to meet her. Lucy refuses. Lucy learns she has a fractured femur and a concussion.

Jamie courts Daunis, hoping to rekindle a previous romance. Daunis tells Jamie she is dating someone else and this creates awkwardness between them. Daunis recounts her history with Jamie to Lucy, explaining how they dated five years prior while he was an undercover officer investigating a meth ring in their community, Sault Ste. Marie. The investigation ended tragically when Lily’s boyfriend killed Lily and then himself. Daunis’s brother was imprisoned for his role in the ring, and Daunis chose to stay with her community rather than leave with Jamie. Jamie is also a former foster child who wanted to find his mother and learn his history, setting up Raven Air Associates to help Indigenous fostered children find their birth families. Lucy is discharged into Daunis and Jamie’s care and stays with them in a hotel suite. She begins working as a paid research assistant for Jamie’s company, which is dedicated to enforcing the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) to protect Indigenous children.

Further flashbacks detail Lucy’s time in the foster care system. After the storage unit fire, she is arrested. Her social worker, Mrs. Clark, advises her to hide her Indigenous heritage from the authorities. Bridget terminates her guardianship of Lucy, making Lucy a ward of the state. Lucy’s first foster placement is with Miss Lonnie, on the remote Beaver Island, where she bonds with her foster sister, “Devery.” When Miss Lonnie’s cabin burns down, the girls are separated. Lucy’s next placement is with the religiously zealous Sterling family. Lucy discovers that the Sterlings’ birth son, Steven, is sexually abusing his nine-year-old sister, Stacy, after he also assaults Lucy. Lucy runs away after confronting the family. They blame her by falsely telling her social worker that they have found drugs in her room.

In the present, Lucy’s physical recovery continues. She receives a threatening note, confirming she is still being pursued by someone. Daunis explains the concept of generational trauma connected to residential schools. Jamie reveals the diner explosion was a targeted pipe bomb. As Daunis and Jamie’s romance rekindles, Lucy is confronted in a public bathroom by a woman who gives her a one-week deadline to deliver something unknown, forcing Lucy to plan another escape.

The final set of flashbacks reveals Lucy’s third placement, at Hoppy Farm, a group home. This is run by a couple she calls Mister and Missus. While there, Lucy learns it is a “baby farm,” where a foster brother, Boyd, receives a “bonus” for impregnating girls whose babies are sold in illegal adoptions. After Lucy has sex with another foster teen, Diego, Boyd murders Diego, fearing Diego will earn a bonus instead of him. Fearing for her own life, Lucy orchestrates Boyd’s death by leaving a candle burning in his loft, causing a fatal fire. She discovers she is pregnant with Diego’s child. When Lucy’s former foster sister, Devery, reappears in her life as the girlfriend of the Hoppys’ son, Bruce, Lucy confides in Devery. Lucy steals a hidden journal detailing the Hoppys’ crimes, along with a key to a safety deposit box. Wanting to earn acceptance with the Hoppy family, Devery betrays Lucy, leading Lucy into a trap set by the Hoppys. Lucy evades them and escapes into the woods.

In 2009, Devery intercepts Lucy’s planned escape from the hotel. To get away, Lucy creates a public scene by loudly confessing to the diner bombing, and is arrested. After being released on bail, she confesses her entire past to Jamie and Daunis, including her role in Boyd’s death and the fact that she gave up her son, Luke, for adoption. Soon after, Stacy Sterling calls with a coded message, luring Lucy back to Hoppy Farm with the promise of seeing Luke.

Lucy drives to the farm, where she finds the Sterlings are holding Luke, now 15 months old. They reveal they were partners with the Hoppys, who Mr. Sterling says are waiting in the barn for Lucy with a surprise. As it is clear that Mr. Sterling made the bomb in the diner, Lucy suspects that there is another bomb in the barn. The Sterlings blame Lucy for Steven’s death in a house fire that occurred during a tornado years earlier. As Mr. Sterling marches Lucy toward the barn, Devery appears and creates a diversion. Unaware of the danger, Stacy brings Luke into the barn to play just before it explodes. Devery runs into the flames and saves Luke but collapses from smoke inhalation and dies. Stacy is severely injured but survives. Daunis and Jamie arrive and help the injured. As sirens approach, Mr. Sterling aims his gun at Lucy and Luke. Jamie shoots and kills Mr. Sterling but is simultaneously shot in the femoral artery and bleeds to death.

In the epilogue, three months later, criminal investigations are ongoing. Lucy has regained legal custody of her son, Luke. She and Luke travel to Sugar Island for Lucy’s Spirit name ceremony. There, she learns that Daunis is pregnant with Jamie’s child. Lucy finally meets her birth mother, Maggie, and her great-grandmother, Granny June. Jamie’s will has named Lucy the beneficiary of a life insurance policy and his research for a book on ICWA, which he hopes she will continue. At the ceremony, Lucy receives her Spirit name: Gaagaagi Noodin Kwe, or Raven Air Woman.