57 pages • 1 hour read
Diane WilsonThe Seed Keeper
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Prologue and Part 1, Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue and Part 1
Prologue Summary
Rosalie relates her great-aunt Darlene Kills Deer’s account of Rosalie’s return to her Dakhóta family after an absence of nearly 30 years. Darlene had filed the paperwork to get custody of Rosalie after both her parents had died, but her claim was unsuccessful. She prayed daily to get her back. Then she had a dream in which a crow told her to plant corn. Though she lived in a senior facility, she hauled dirt in buckets to her balcony and planted the seeds passed down from her ancestors. She prayed to the plants to help bring Rosalie home. One day, Rosalie and her adult son arrived, and Darlene asked Rosalie to water the corn, a first step in reconnecting her with her past and her heritage. Rosalie states that Darlene died a year later, but before she did, they were able to share memories and dreams.
Chapter 1 Summary: “Rosalie Iron Wing, 2002”
The narrative jumps back to 2002. Rosalie Iron Wing tidies her farmhouse kitchen while recalling the stories her father used to tell her about Dakhóta origins and their relation to the land: “We are a civilized people who understand that our survival depends on knowing how to be a good relative, especially to Iná Maka, Mother Earth” (6). She jots a note to her son before loading some supplies into the truck. She tells a neighbor that she will be gone a few days, but she hurries away before he can say or ask more, as she does not want people prying into her business.
Rosalie speeds away, noting places that stir her memories: a large granite outcropping where her father used to pray, the gas station where they would wait for the snowplow to pass, and a memorial to the 1862 US-Dakota War. Her father claimed that various wars and diseases made them the last remaining Iron Wings. Rosalie then arrives at the cabin where she grew up, which she last left 28 years ago.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Rosalie Iron Wing, 2002”
After her husband John’s death, Rosalie dreamed of returning to her childhood home. Now that she is there, she is awash in memories. Seeing her mother’s copy of Black Beauty simultaneously brings up happy and sad memories. She recalls her father encouraging her to read so she would be prepared to face the world with knowledge. As a child, she asked her father how her mother died, and he refused to tell her much about her beyond how they met and that she had “hair the color of crow’s feather” (22). Rosalie remembers the day she was taken away by social services and despairs that now there is no one to keep their memories and stories alive.
She uses snow to clean the neglected cabin’s kitchen table, as there’s no running water or electricity. She sees the letter D carved into the table. She did not consider such rusticity a problem when she was a child, and her father taught her to trap game and forage plants after saying a prayer and giving an offering of tobacco (čhaŋšáša). She felt connected to the land then and even had a spiritual dream about a cottonwood tree her father had told her to pray to.
Her husband’s dying days come to mind and that, combined with keenly feeling the loss of her family and purpose, leads her to contemplate suicide with the gun she brought. A winter storm blows in as she holds the gun, and she hears her father say her name. She throws the gun into the snow.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Rosalie Iron Wing, 2002”
Rosalie straps on her father’s snowshoes and goes to the clearing she remembers from her childhood. Upon seeing that the cedar trees have been cut down and invasive buckthorn grows in their place, she begins to cry. Suddenly, she is interrupted by a large dog, followed by a woman Rosalie recognizes from when they were children. Ida Johnson was the minister’s daughter, but she was sent away after her cousin assaulted her. Shortly after she returned, her cousin died in a hunting accident. Her uncle, who used to hunt with Ray Iron Wing, gave Ida the hunting shack to live in when her family moved away and left her behind. Rosalie is grateful for Ida’s arrival, not only because Ida builds a fire and provides her with some food, but because Ida knew Rosalie’s family.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Rosalie Iron Wing, 2002”
In the three days since encountering Ida, Rosalie has filled her days with chopping wood, tending her clothes, and rocking in her chair, where she alternates between reminiscing and letting her mind go blank. She finds the star quilt her mother sewed inside a cedar box and suspects that Ida kept watch on the cabin in all the years that it was vacant. Ida leaves packages of meat and other food on the porch, as Rosalie does not feel up to being social. She has a faint memory of sewing with her mother, and then her thoughts turn to Mankato.
Prologue and Part 1, Chapters 1-4 Analysis
The Prologue sets the stage for the story’s various themes and motifs, as well as raises questions about Rosalie and her life before she reunited with her great-aunt Darlene. Rosalie was taken away from her home, but the circumstances are not yet explained. This mystery hooks the reader and builds narrative tension, establishing the question of what happened to her in the intervening decades. Darlene growing and praying to corn from her ancestors sets up a recurring motif: the importance of seeds.
Chapter 1 then takes the reader to a few months earlier when Rosalie leaves the farm she has been on for 22 years and hastily drives to her childhood home. Rosalie’s sense of urgency is another mystery for the reader, as she doesn’t do anything once she’s there. Her urgency is entirely emotional and spiritual, and it seems as if her eyes see beyond objects to focus on what she has lost. Wilson uses both exposition and imagery to tally Rosalie’s losses: her husband, her father, her mother, her connection to Dakhóta culture, her family’s stories, and even the cedars in the clearing. Images like buckthorn (an invasive weed), the lack of running water, and blustering winter storms create a bleak tone that parallels Rosalie’s mental state. She has come home to find the stories that will put her and her life into context, but she worries that it is too late. Putting the main character at this crisis point so early in the story accomplishes two things. First, it creates curiosity in readers to discover how she arrived at this point and, second, it raises the anticipation of how Rosalie will resolve her crisis. The end of the Prologue—showing Rosalie’s later reconnection with Darlene—foreshadows that she does get beyond her despair, self-neglect, and fleeting moments of suicidal ideation, but the narrative establishes the central question of how she does so.
The voice of Ray Iron Wing, Rosalie’s father, speaks loudly in Rosalie’s mind during this time period. The first two-and-a-half pages of Chapter 1 consist of Ray’s stories about the Dakhóta origins, the land, and how the environment changed when white settlers came. These stories are significant in the moment when Rosalie prepares to leave her farmhouse because not only is she going back to her place of origin, but she is assessing her life on the farm—married to a white farmer—and weighing her decision to leave it all behind. Ray’s voice acts as her guide, and the lessons he taught her about survival are needed as she faces the winter in the sparsely equipped cabin. The author’s choice to put two other voices (Darlene’s and Ray’s) ahead of Rosalie’s also mirrors her sense of herself. She does not trust her own perceptions yet and relies on the father who raised her and shaped her identity and the aunt who fills in the gaps about her family history. This structural choice establishes Rosalie as a woman attempting to find the thread of her life, but all she has at first are fragments of memories.
Significant dreams are mentioned twice in these early chapters, indicating the importance of dreams in this story. The first is Darlene’s dream of a crow telling her to plant corn to call Rosalie home, and the second is young Rosalie’s dream of the cottonwood tree. These dreams establish how Relationships with the Land are integral to Dakhóta culture. Plants act as intercessors between humans and the spirit world, conveying messages and giving guidance. They are treated as respected family members, so their appearance in dreams is an affirmation of Dakhóta spirituality. Rosalie’s childhood nature dream hints at her deep connection to the land and Dakhóta culture, showing how her search for identity is about reconnecting with her people and culture rather than forging something new.
Ida’s arrival is fortuitous for Rosalie and also provides a counterpoint to Rosalie’s situation. Ida not only tends to Rosalie’s immediate needs of warmth and food, revealing a similar grasp of survival skills, but she “feeds” Rosalie’s need for information about her family. The two women share backgrounds that reflect one another’s. Each essentially lost their family after a death—Rosalie’s father, Ida’s cousin. Whereas Rosalie was taken from her home, Ida’s family left their home and their daughter. As Rosalie’s loss resonates in these early chapters, the arrival of a character with a different sort of familial loss is something to note for later development.
