Warrior Girl Unearthed

Angeline Boulley returns to the same Ojibwe community from Firekeeper’s Daughter, this time with a new lead. Perry Firekeeper-Birch is the daughter of the previous book’s heroine, and the story takes place years later. Perry stumbles into a thread involving missing tribal artifacts and ancestral remains held by museums and private collectors that legally should have been returned to her people.

Boulley uses the YA mystery frame to do real work on a real subject. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, the politics of museum collections, and the ongoing fight to bring ancestors home.

Perry is a different kind of protagonist than Daunis. Looser, less driven, more inclined to skate by than to push hard. The character growth across the book is earned.

New readers can start here, but the emotional weight of the earlier book pays off in this one. Reading Firekeeper’s Daughter first is recommended.