132 pages 4 hours read

Angeline Boulley

Firekeeper's Daughter

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2021

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.

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.