Firekeeper's Daughter

Several people, mostly teen girls, are murdered. An adult rapes a teen girl. Native women discuss the "blanket party" custom in which a group of women abducts a rapist, wraps him in a blanket, and takes him to a lonely spot where they beat the living daylights out of him. A teen boy punches a teammate in the face, breaking his nose, for insulting his sister.

Many characters have, or have had, sex with many other characters. Levi Firekeeper Sr.'s sex with two teenage girls led to half-siblings Daunis and Levi. Daunis and Lily have a running joke about the ridiculous circumstances under which they lost their virginity. There's a lot of casual reference to "snagging," the local slang for having sex, and teen girls have birth-control implants. A drunken adult woman (who's also cheating on her husband) flashes passers-by from the hockey team's Booster Bus. Adultery is common among some of the adults.

Constant crude language and bawdy humor. "F--k" (and its local slang equivalent, "snag"), "tits," "s--t," "crap," "a--hole," "boner," "screw it," "piss," "fart," "boob," "damn," "hells." Daunis gets upset when her brother refers to fellow Native Americans as "'skins" -- "As if using the redskin slur ourselves makes it okay." On the other hand she's happy when he gives her a fine supply of trash talk for male teammates who give her a hard time for being on their hockey team, including "At least my d--k's bigger than yours."

Substance abuse is everywhere in this story -- and not glamorized. Drunken partying by teens of the previous generation leads to many of the issues in Firekeeper's Daughter. Teens drink alcohol and sometimes get drunk. A meth cartel's invasion of the reservations ruins lives, and a meth dealer's murder of her best friend leads Daunis to go undercover. As part of her undercover work, Daunis learns to make meth in a lab, and turns out to be very good at it. Tobacco is used for rituals as well as smoking.

Parents need to know that 2022 Michael J. Printz Award winner Firekeeper's Daughter is a beautifully written, intricately crafted tale by Native American (Ojibwe) Angeline Boulley, set in Michigan's Upper Peninsula in 2004. The story involves past local scandals and a current meth epidemic on the local Ojibwe reservation: Narrator Daunis Fontaine, 18 as the story opens, is the child of Levi Firekeeper, a now-deceased local hockey god and poor kid from the rez, and the naive 16-year-old daughter of the richest family in Sault Ste. Marie. Her half-brother Levi, three months younger, is the child of the same hockey god and the girl who got him drunk and into her bed, and was married to him with the baby when Daunis' mom returned from having her own child. Despite this toxic start, the two sibs have always been close. Also good at hockey. Growing up in two worlds of her mom's wealthy family and her late dad's relatives, Daunis isn't sure where she belongs. But after her best friend Lily's meth-crazed boyfriend kills Lily and then himself, Daunis agrees to go undercover to find out who's making and selling the meth that's ruining lives and causing murders on the reservation. In the process, she's romantically involved with the faux-teen undercover agent on Levi's hockey team. The story is full of crude language, bawdy humor, and violence, from fistfights and deliberate injury of hockey players to rape and murder. It is also full of surprises as characters reveal unsuspected strengths and flaws, leading to many plot twists. There's a lot of history about past atrocities against Native Americans, including kids forced into boarding school and babies taken away to be adopted off the rez. Adult and teen characters have sex, teen girls have birth control implants, adult characters cheat on their spouses. Gambling, from the casino that supports the tribe to the card games of the elders, is part of the social fabric. Lots of drinking and drugging are central to the plot, but not seen as attractive. There's also a strong message of love, family, acceptance, belonging, finding out who you are, and standing up for what's right.