It's so dang good, to no one's surprise. Angeline Boulley has a knack for creating slow burn mysteries full of culture and intrigue. I really enjoyed the focus on reclaiming artifacts and how museums abuse laws for their benefit. Perry is a non-typical protagonist - she's blunt and often apathetic. But throughout the book, you get to watch her find her passion. Not only is someone taking girls, there's also a heist to be planned, and justice to be exacted - sounds pretty dang good, right?? I also quite enjoyed how it was a bit of a spinoff of The Firekeeper's Daughter, just with a few cameos from Daunis. While not for the faint of heart, it's an excellent novel that will leave you thinking.

*Thank you to Henry Holt & Co and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review*

"#1 New York Times bestselling author of Firekeeper's Daughter Angeline Boulley takes us back to Sugar Island in this high-stakes thriller about the power of discovering your stolen history.

Perry Firekeeper-Birch has always known who she is - the laidback twin, the troublemaker, the best fisher on Sugar Island. Her aspirations won't ever take her far from home, and she wouldn't have it any other way. But as the rising number of missing Indigenous women starts circling closer to home, as her family becomes embroiled in a high-profile murder investigation, and as greedy grave robbers seek to profit off of what belongs to her Anishinaabe tribe, Perry begins to question everything.

In order to reclaim this inheritance for her people, Perry has no choice but to take matters into her own hands. She can only count on her friends and allies, including her overachieving twin and a charming new boy in town with unwavering morals. Old rivalries, sister secrets, and botched heists cannot - will not - stop her from uncovering the mystery before the ancestors and missing women are lost forever.

Sometimes, the truth shouldn't stay buried."

For all those like me wanting more after reading Firekeeper's Daughter!

This was an outstanding follow up from Firekeeper’s Daughter. Perry’s story and struggle to understand how she wants to be a warrior for her people is believable and inspiring. I learned how woefully ignorant I was about the repatriation of indigenous remains and objects that had been excavated and disrespected in the name of the white man’s idea of anthropology. The storyline about MMIW2S was presented in a way that I think will speak to all ages- teens and older. This book was excellent, I read it in 24 hours, I could not put it down .

Thank you to NetGalley for the digital ARC.

Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley is a portal into the lives of Native American women in twentieth century. Boulley’s previous novel, Firekeeper’s Daughter, establishes her as an award-winning author who can deftly transport her readers into a suspenseful mystery in the Ojibwe community on Sugar Island. Warrior Girl Unearthed is Boulley’s second novel. Boulley’s writing creates another heroine with Perry Firekeeper-Birch, cousin to Daunis from the previous book, who is consumed with the missing ancestors that her Anishinaabe tribe is fighting to bring home to the reservation. Perry must fight to advocate for her community, her family and herself as there are several Indigenous woman who are missing and an enemy stealing their ancestors’ remains.
Perry is a forthright and outspoken young woman who resists others telling her what to do. So when she discovers the human skeletons of her ancestors in the possession of a “collector,” Perry is outraged at the disrespectful conditions. She vows to steal them back and give them proper burial. Boulley’s haunting descriptions of the ancestors is poignant and distressing. “I stick with my original plan to reclaim only those baskets signed with Sugar Island family names I recognize. If I try to take anything else, I will not stop. I sing to those I am leaving behind. Niminjinawez. I am sorry…”. This conflict between tribes and institutions/collectors is a theme of Boulley’s novel. She eloquently gives the argument to Perry and her mission to rescue the ancestral remains in one private collection. I enjoyed Boulley’s vivid history of the Anishinaabe fight to reclaim ancestors and possessions that museums and institutions had laid claim to and refused to relinquish. “…Cooper says museums use that label, ‘culturally unidentifiable,’ as a catchall if they don’t have the resources to do a proper inventory. He says they also use it even after tribes provide evidence, because then, the museum can still hold on to the objects.” The law from the “US Department of the Interior is the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)”. This law should protect the tribes in their efforts to reclaim their ancestors. Since 1990 the statute “requires institutions that receive federal funding to inventory their holdings of Indigenous human remains and burial objects to facilitate their return to the respective tribes.” The NAGPRA law Boulley references in Warrior Girl Unearthed is the crux of her argument for why indigenous remains should be returned to their tribes for proper burial. The eponymous “warrior girl” is the skeleton Perry discovers that the local college has claimed to be “culturally unidentifiable” in order to allow the college to keep the remains. Perry is incensed by this law and it stirs her emotions to act and save the ancestors in the heist that is the climax of the book. This law and the debate are imminently important to the themes Boulley wants to illustrate for the readers.
Perry is a heroine that readers can embrace for her moxie, bravery and her flaws. She shows her anxiety and fear for her people and her traditions. Perry is also determined to protect her family. When the disappearance of indigenous women hits close to home, Perry fights for her future and her family.

I had thought that The Firekeeper's Daughter was a perfectly contained story that needed no sequel, but I was wrong. This book is not an exact sequel, but it features some of the same characters in a story that takes place ten years after the events of The Firekeeper's Daughter. Daunis's nieces Perry and Pauline have grown into teenagers who are helping out in their community by agreeing to be interns for the tribe. Pauline is doing this by eager choice, but Perry is doing this under pressure from her Auntie Daunis after crashing her car.

I freaking loved a story centered around tribal youth interns since every Native community in the southwest US has a similar program. (This one was weirdly more organized and intense than any of these summer programs here, but the reasoning behind that makes more sense at the end of the story. It's still weird and slightly unbelievable, but it makes more sense.) This particular community has a cultural center, museum, and library, as well as a thriving tribal government including law enforcement, so the twins have plenty of opportunity to help out in many areas. Perry is the main focus of the story, and in her first placement she learns a lot about the theft of Native artifacts and how tribal communities are working to get their sacred objects and ancestors home. It lights a fire in her to have her stolen relatives brought home, especially when she learns that the museum is working with anthropologists at the local college to make this happen. Perry is angry and brash, and determined to bring her people home, so chaos ensues when she embarks on a series of adventures trying to accomplish this, the result of which is her constant movement from one intern placement to another as departments realize they cannot work with her. In the meantime she makes friends with her fellow interns, especially her Team of Misfit Toys, who agree to help her on her most chaotic and dangerous mission of all. Dovetailing with a story about the remains of ancestors being held hostage by museums and private collectors, is the story of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women of Perry's Native community. Similar to the ancestors who Perry is fighting to bring home, the MMIW are being dismissed and ignored when they go missing, to the distress of the community. I deeply sympathized with Perry's anger and fright of this issue. It's difficult to walk through life knowing no one will care if you go missing.

Although this was a compelling read, and I loved the characters, and the day to day depiction of tribal life, I felt some of the same frustrations about this book that I felt about The Firekeeper's Daughter. First the story is a bit of a mess. There is a LOT going on, and the ending was completely rushed. My head was spinning a little, and I still have questions about the motives of the characters at the end. Second, while I appreciate that Perry was lucky enough to be taught her language, this story really enforces the divide between tribal people who speak their language and those who don't. Perry gets better toward the end of the book, but her actions in the beginning remind me a lot of the people in my community who look down on me for not knowing the language, but who mock me when I try to learn. I wish this had either been a bigger part of the story, or not part of the story at all since it wasn't explained with nuance like the rest of the issues were. Also, again with tribal people having so much trust in government and law enforcement! This has never, ever been my experience as a tribal member. At some point the story does mention off-hand that oh, yes there's a lot of corruption in tribal government, but it doesn't make sense that Perry and Pauline seem so oblivious to it. Even Auntie Daunis, who was so good about keeping an eye on Pauline in the first part of the book seems to drift around other implications of inappropriate behavior. How do they not know that they can't really trust the people in charge to not have a ton of sinister motives about their work? That piece of the book was so stupid. Another part that bothered me was the fact that Cooper didn't advise Perry more when she made her stupid mistakes. In my community Cooper would have spoken to Perry's parents and probably her Aunt Daunis, and had them join him in a conversation about her actions, and why they were wrong. He probably would have looped in Stormy Nodin also, especially since he recommended Perry to Cooper in the first place. Maybe Anishanaabes are different, but it seemed odd that he just dumped Perry and left her devastated and still planning to do harm to her people because he didn't really explain to her why what she was doing was ultimately wrong. I guess there wouldn't have been a plot otherwise.

Still, those are true nitpicks, and on the whole I loved this book, and I loved seeing what became of Daunis and her family. I loved hearing about one fictional museum's fight to bring their people home, and I loved reading about Perry's fight for her people, however misguided. I can't believe it's been almost ten years since the grave robber Donald Miller was first investigated by the FBI. I hope there are many more Perrys out there (maybe with better mentors) to help bring our people home.

Warrior Girl Unearthed is a wonderful eye opening story that brings to light how museums wrongly hold onto the remains of Indigenous Peoples. The story follows Perry, who is determined to get her tribe's ancestral remains returned to her tribe. This is an important story for all ages. It helps us see the importance of caring for ancestral remains, and not allowing them to be treated as possessions. This is also a great story about following your heart and learning from your mistakes. I highly recommend this book.

Perry Firekeeper-Birch's laid-back summer hits a snag when she crashes her car and is forced to work at her indigenous tribe's summer internship program. Soon, Perry becomes fascinated with the federal law about the return of ancestral remains and sacred items but is caught between the glacially slow pace of diplomacy and working within the law and the desperate desire to take action into her own hands. When Native women start disappearing and her family is caught in the middle of a high-profile murder investigation, Perry plans a heist to save her ancestors and her tribe members before all is lost.

Warrior Girl Unearthed is not exactly a sequel to Firekeeper's Daughter. Set 10 years later, it can be read as a standalone, but reading Firekeeper's Daughter first will help you understand the side characters better. Like her previous book, Warrior Girl Unearthed is a fun Young Adult novel, conveying a deeper message along with its high-action plot. Although I felt like I learned a lot, the story felt a bit forced and over-the-top.

Rating: 3.5 Stars

Fabulous fabulous fabulous. I actually read this, having never read Firekeeper's Daughter (the shame, I know!) and while it became clear that this story was connected to Boulley's first work, it didn't make me feel left out or like I did not know what was going on. Warrior Girl Unearthed tells the story of repatriation of indigenous remains, sacred objects, cultural items, etc. through the viewpoint of teenager Perry Firekeeper-Birch. Not only does Perry get drawn into the work being done in her tribe to bring ancestral remains and items of theirs home, but also (eventually) an engaging mystery, murder included.

What stood out the most for me with this novel, was that reading it made me want to learn so much more. Boulley does an excellent job informing the reader, but also leaving enough room for them to go and learn more about the trials and tribulations of repatriation on their own. Not only that, Perry and the rest of the cast of characters are all incredibly engaging and interesting, each in their own way. I could go on and on. The setting was so easy to visualize, the mystery elements were not overtly obvious, and there was even a cute, old dog to top it all off! I'll absolutely be recommending this book to friends and patrons and cannot wait to see how future readers receive it.

Excellent follow-up to Boulley’s widely acclaimed first book. The characters felt more like teenagers and the novel addressed important current issues in Indigenous culture. Strongly recommend for fans of thrillers and mysteries.

Angeline Boulley scores another hat trick with this book! It's adventure, thriller, and realistic fiction wrapped in one. Boulley takes us back into the world she developed in FKD. We see a few familiar faces, but get to meet all new characters and learn about their lives. This story is fast-paced and I couldn't put it down!

I found Boulley's Firekeeper's daughter compelling and well-written and intense and sometimes hard to read, and I felt the same way about Warrior Girl Unearthed. This is set 10 years after Firekeeper's Daughter, in 2014, and the main character in this one is Daunis' teenaged cousin, Perry Firekeeper-Birch. Perry and her twin sister Pauline are 16 years old and Perry is looking forward to spending her summer fishing with her dad and her dog while ambitious, driven Pauline does an internship. After dropping Pauline off on her first day, Perry crashes their Jeep trying to avoid a bear cub and his mother, and her Auntie Daunis pays for the repairs but makes Perry take an internship to pay her back. Perry gets assigned to a museum and gets interested in the return of stolen indigenous artifacts and human remains to their tribes after seeing the archaeological remains of a nameless indigenous woman - the titular warrior girl - being stored at a nearby university. As the summer goes on, Perry, her sister, and her friends get deeper and deeper into a reclamation/repatriation project all while local indigenous women are going missing. My only complaint here is that here is so much going on - Perry is learning about The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), getting involved in a plot to reclaim remains from a local man, literally stumbling over a dead body, doing an internship, falling in like with a boy, trying to find missing local women, doing a bunch of illegal stuff, planning a heist, and more. I still found this really engaging and compelling, but I thought that the many subplots detracted from the impact at some points. Still, I appreciated the chance to return to this setting and I hope Boulley plans to write more in this world.

I devoured Warrior Girl Unearthed! Just like with Firekeeper’s Daughter, Boulley has created a strong a compelling main character whose life and driving missions I couldn’t get enough of. She does a great job with setting and I feel like I’m in the UP when reading. I will definitely be recommending this book.

If you know me, I always recommend Firekeepers Daughter and it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. So I was stoked when I heard this one was coming out! I loved this one just as much. Perry is a true warrior. I loved being able to see Daunis 10 years later and seeing where she’s at in love. Granny June will forever make me laugh. I love the education about Ojibwe & the laws that make it harder for them to reclaim their ancestors. If further dives into jurisdiction of law enforcement and how there’s a gap for crimes that occur on tribal land. Seeing this through Perry’s eyes (a 16 year old) was really intriguing, as she was still growing up and had to learn to make her an mistakes. This is, yet again, another book I think everyone should read immediately. Now I’m already hoping Angeline writes a third book!!!!

Thank you NetGalley & Fierce Reads for an eARC in exchange for an honest review. This will be our May 2 and you will want to preorder asap!!

I think #FirekeepersDaughter is one of the most important books recently published, so I was very excited to read an ARC of #WarriorGirlUnearthed by #AngelineBoulley. The story follows twin nieces of Daunis; however, you do not have to have read Firekeeper's Daughter to read this one. Perry and her sister are interns at a summer program, who are tasked throughout the summer with a series of different group and individual projects on and off the island.

Through this story, the reader learns more about several real world and important issues such as the continued epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Two-Spirit people. We also learn more about repatriating bones and artifacts of Indigenous people and the laws that go along with it. These topics are explained and examined through Perry's eyes, which helps the YA audience to learn from her.

My only concern with this story is that it tries to do so much. Any one of the above topics could have been its own story with Perry and her friends and family at its center. It is at once explaining how private collections of artifacts and bones should be returned, history, abduction of friends and family, a romance, a coming-of-age story, as well as a heist. There are so many characters that the multiple story lines and multiple characters may be confusing to a younger YA audience. For older YA and adult, however, the book is one that should be read and appreciated.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for this Arc. I can't wait to buy it for our library.

A solid companion to THE FIREKEEPER'S DAUGHTER. I really appreciated that the protagonist isn't trying to be the best at everything; she acknowledges she is not the most driven, or the smartest, or the prettiest. But she has extremely strong values and ties to her community, and those are what shape her life. Once I got to the end and could look back at the plot, I understood why there were so many threads created. However, for most of the book those threads felt too loose and unrelated. A tighter plot was all that was missing for a full five stars. And, though I didn't expect it from a YA book, shout out for the accurate representation of the time and commitment it takes a person to breastfeed and pump.

Warrior Girl Unearthed follows Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley. I wish I had looked over Firekeeper's Daughter--just to remember the details more vividly; the main character is Aunt Daunis in Warrior Girl Unearthed. It's nice to see how Daunis is doing years later. She's still tough as nails!

Perry Firekeeper-Birch loves her Ojibwe tribe. She knows the language and customs better than most. This summer is the summer to fish with her dad. It'll be great. Her Aunt Daunis doesn't give her or Perry's twin, Pauline, an inch. She pushes them to be proud of their culture and to be strong--to fight for their tribe as well as for female rights and dignity. Daunis gave the girls a jeep, which the girls will pay her for, but there are rules. One of which is "no speeding." There goes the summer of fishing and goofing off. Perry, speeding, swerves to avoid an animal and crashes the jeep. Now she has to do the summer internship. Perry doesn't "play nice" in the sense that she doesn't act as expected. She questions and stands her ground, which can be empowering or it can backfire.

Perry is assigned to one of the stranger member of her tribe to work at the museum, taking care of the artifacts and acquiring more. As she gets to know her boss better, she realizes that he does not waver from his devotion to the tribe; she comes to respect him. He works patiently and persistently to acquire the bones and artifacts of their citizens even when it takes decades. Perry lacks the patience. Maybe stealing would be faster. She joins the Misfits for the Friday mandatory lessons for the interns. They could help. Perry details how many much money is needed to bring their ancestors home as well as ancestral artifacts to the Misfits. It would be a way to serve their tribe. As Perry devises her schemes and learns about the non-Ojibwe people at the college who hold on to what doesn't belong to them, she becomes obsessed with bringing them and the objects home. Meanwhile, girls are going missing.

I really enjoyed this novel. I've barely scratched the surface; I stopped at missing girls to keep from revealing too much information. I must admit that I'm a rule follower. Perry is not--she is a risk taker. I admire her courage and toughness; she doesn't cower or please people for the sake of being "nice." She questions and attacks to make them see truth, not letting people imply it's okay to "own" native american bones & their belongings. If you liked Firekeeper's Daughter, this novel is a must!

After reading and loving The Firekeeper's Daughter I was thrilled to receive an advance copy of Warrior Girl Unearthed. Warrior Girl revolves around a younger set of Daunis's relatives who become entangled in the fight to repatriate ancestor's remains from colleges, museums and private collectors. Perry is a modern warrior girl willing to break whatever laws she must to be able to reclaim sacred items and return them to their families. This is such an important topic, beautifully written by a member of Michigan's Ojibwe community who knows the importance of reclaiming Indigenous history.

She did it again, folks!!!! She left me in a puddle of ugly tears!! (4.5 stars)

“Sugar Island is always ready to welcome our warrior girls home, where they are loved.”

I cried most of the way through this book because of how emotionally raw it is for me, as an indigenous person, to read about repatriation of ancestors and their items. I cried because of Perry & Pauline’s relationship as sisters. I cried for all our MMIWG2S. I cried for ancestors who never came home. I cried for children who’ve had to grow up without mothers. I cried for those who grew up disconnected, who don’t have a rez or a community, for those who don’t have a gang of aunties nearby to blanket-party someone. Angeline always cuts right to the heart of it all and bleeds you out emotionally. The first half of the book made me forget that what I was reading was a heist/thriller/crime story and I was lost in anthropology and remembering what it was to be 16 and grounded. I loved meeting the cast of characters and getting to know them through Pauline’s eyes (and fall in love with [redacted] through Pauline’s eyes! The friendship she has with Shense makes my heart so warm as well. The second half of the book was punchy and fast-paced. The ball started rolling and it didn’t stop once. I have so many “OH?” “W H A T?” “I KNEW I DIDN’T TRUST [redacted]” and “WHAT THE FUCK” notes scattered throughout this half of the book. When the mystery was untangled, it felt like I sped back through all of the breadcrumbs in the beginning and found them again and then I got mad at myself for not figuring it out sooner.
I will say I was a little disappointed with some of the character development and information we’re given in regard to our new friends as I felt it to be a tad bit lacking and I was disappointed that [redacted] didn’t end up coming home but, hey, maybe there’s a third book on the horizon for that.
Saving the best for last,
DAUNIS’S UPDATE!!!!!!!!!! I SCREAMED! My angel! My baby! My favorite girl!! I love her! I love [redacted]! This was the perfect continuation of her story and it was nice to see that, other than getting mixed up in some shit (again) everything seems to be going pretty alright for her.

Angeline Boulley has done it again with another beautiful story. Warrior Girl Unearthed is easily one of the top books I've ever read. The story follows Daunis's niece, Perry as she takes on a summer internship and dives into the world of museums and who "owns" artifacts. When interning at the tribal museum, she was introduced to the remains of Warrior Girl and makes it her goal to bring her home.

As a museum professional, I LOVED the discussion of NAGPRA, repatriation, and how museums and universities are a product of colonization. Boulley does a phenomenal job of taking these themes and making them easy to understand and accessible. Like Firekeeper's Daughter, the book has a rich story woven with Anishinaabe culture, Anishinaabemowin, and many issues that are prevalent in Indigenous communities. Perry is an easily loveable main character that will have you rooting for her throughout the whole book. I loved this book so much that I finished it in a day because I didn't want to put it down but I also never wanted it to end. When this book comes out on May 2nd, I will 100% be telling everyone in my life to read this book.

Thank you to MacMillian and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

If you loved Firekeeper's Daughter, you will be sure to love this one as well. It's not a sequel, but readers of the first will be happy to get an update on Daunis, who is a minor side character in this book. Like Firekeeper's Daughter, this book is also a sort of thriller/suspense novel. I was sucked into Perry's story and felt like I was learning alongside her as she was learning about NAGPRA during her internship.