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.

Download PDF

Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-6

Part 1, Chapters 7-13

Part 2, Chapters 14-17

Part 2, Chapters 18-20

Part 2, Chapters 21-25

Part 2, Chapters 26-29

Part 2, Chapters 30-34

Part 2, Chapters 35-39

Part 2, Chapters 40-44

Part 3, Chapters 45-52

Part 4, Chapters 53-57

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Book Club Questions

Themes

The Individual’s Responsibility in the Community

Daunis always knew she wanted to help and serve her community in some way, despite that same community not always viewing her as fully Native due to her mother’s French/white side. Daunis, however, has seen her aunt and uncle, Teddie and Art, model what it means to server others on Sugar Island. Though Daunis wants to follow in their footsteps by serving, she didn’t think she would be serving in the way the FBI is asking her. Though initially hesitant, Ron and Jamie convince Daunis to follow in Uncle David’s footsteps and join the investigation as a Confidential Informant to not only help the FBI but to help service the health and safety of her community.

As the investigation becomes more complicated, the “help” that Daunis provides becomes a source of internal conflict for her. She feels trapped between two incompatible worlds. Daunis wants to help her community by finding out who is making and distributing the meth, but she also doesn’t want to damage her community by allowing the FBI to mete out punitive justice without concern for tribal ways or Native autonomy. Daunis must make decisions that will either prioritize helping the FBI in their investigation or protecting people she initially believes are not only innocent but people who uphold the community. As Daunis grows in her confidence, however, she begins making choices that prioritize the protection of her community without thinking in terms of either-or. While Daunis always assumed that she would be a “helper” by going to school to become a doctor, she learns over the course of the book that her natural abilities are helpful in ways she didn’t even realize before the investigation, natural abilities that include her scientific mind, her compassionate heart, and even her ability to walk in the worlds of both of her families. These abilities all prove to be of tremendous help to both her and those around her. Much like the raven that Daunis sees on Duck Island—whose origin story is that they felt forgotten by the creator as they couldn’t identify the gifts they had been given—Daunis eventually views her gift of being a “helper” as born partly out of her ability to be adaptable, to walk in two worlds, something she has always seen as a disadvantage.

When Daunis is presented with the opportunity to become a Tribal Member, Granny June reminds her that her decisions, especially ones like becoming a member of the tribe, are never truly just about her. She needs to think “seven generations” ahead. Jonsy brings Daunis to the landfill and explains that nothing can grow there because people dumped toxic waste there without thinking of future generations. This metaphorical scene underscores that, if people like Daunis don’t begin thinking generations ahead of them, they will make it much harder for others in their community to grow and flourish. Daunis and Levi and many other characters in this book carry the burdens of grief given to them by their parents and grandparents. One of the ways Daunis grows throughout this story is in her ability to let go of other people’s sadness and regret and mistakes and instead focus on how her present actions can positively impact both her future and the future of those younger than her. She accepts the community’s wellbeing as part of her individual responsibility.

Seeing Someone’s “Whole Story”

As the investigation progresses, Daunis notices that Jamie and Ron are only ever looking for information on people that is damning and negative. While Daunis understands that the FBI is in her community with a specific agenda, she is disturbed by Jamie and Ron’s tendency to assume they know and understand who people are based on a few facts they have acquired about them. Where Daunis finds this especially troubling is in their treatment of Heather and Robin’s murders. Jamie and Ron don’t even realize that they are practicing implicit bias when they are quick to determine that Robin and Heather’s murders couldn’t be foul play because both women “looked” like people who would get into this kind of trouble. This theme becomes more prominent in the book when Daunis realizes that Grant won’t be held accountable for raping her or anything he may have done to Robin or Heather. Daunis, and readers, get to see what kind of thinking contributes to the overwhelming statistic of missing and murdered Indigenous women whose cases are rarely deemed worth investigating.

Daunis herself has often been on the receiving end of people’s misunderstanding of her and her story. Even while this is the case, at the beginning of the book Daunis is often quick to sum up other people based on her limited understanding of them. This changes by the end of the novel, and Daunis begins considering someone’s “whole story” and not just their visible “wound.”

Daunis begins to see others in a more nuanced way only once she begins letting go of some of her fears about how others see and perceive her. Daunis never would have experienced the kindness and generosity of the “hockey girlfriend’s” in their gift of the jersey if she hadn’t agreed to become an “anglerfish” like them for the investigation. Daunis’s primary concern in posing as an “anglerfish” was that people would think of her a certain way and would write a narrative about her based on this one part of her. What Daunis learns in her interactions with the other hockey girlfriends in that people still saw her for who she was; that being with Jamie didn’t erase her or negate her other qualities—her own name still appeared on the jersey the other girls gifted her.

Travis is another example of someone who was easy to cast as a villain at the beginning of the book but who becomes more of a complicated character once Daunis unravels the truth about what happened to him. Travis hurt many people and killed Lily. He also experienced injustices and hurt by others. Travis’s story is perhaps one of the most complicated in the story, which is why it is the one that sticks with Daunis the most. The reoccurring dream of Travis signifies Daunis’s need to revisit what she thought happened that night in the context of what had been happening for the last year.

Trusting One’s Sense of Self

Daunis places a lot of faith in her rational and logical mind and identifies as being a scientist in this way at the beginning of the book. Throughout the novel, readers see how difficult it can be for her to hold two opposing truths or even viewpoints at once—Daunis’s thinking is quite black and white and often times even reductive and overly simplistic. As Daunis grows and matures she realizes that there is a part of her decision-making self that she is denying if she is constantly only willing to understand things as they make sense to her logically.

Teddie, Daunis’s closest confidant, knows that Daunis is keeping something from her during the investigation, but she doesn’t know what. Instead of prying Daunis for answers or an explanation, Teddie holds an intervention sweat. After the sweat, Teddie talks to Daunis about the importance of being able see things and people clearly and then having the confidence and stable center of self to determine who is both trustworthy and deserving of intimacy. Teddie shows her own trust and confidence in Daunis by affirming Daunis’s ability to trust her own feelings/gut instincts. Daunis learns that her gut feeling is just as powerful a tool in discovering the truth as her logical and scientific mind is. If she uses both together, she will be even more equipped to see and understand the things that are in front of her.

While Daunis is given multiple hints as to Levi’s change in character, she wants so badly for him to not be involved in the meth business that she is able to create logical reasons for the things that are not adding up. She is also able to see enough glimpses of the Levi she knows and loves that she is able to dismiss some of his more alarming behaviors. Not until Daunis is able to rationalize why so much money is in their shared bank account yet still experiences bad feelings about Levi does Daunis consider that perhaps her gut feeling shouldn’t be ignored and might in fact hold some water in this investigation. It is when Daunis decides to listen to her bad feelings about Levi that she begins to fully connect the pieces of the investigation. Daunis places more trust in her feelings by the end of the book because she has gained confidence in herself both from her work in the investigation and from the help and encouragement she has received from those around her.