Fireweed follows Jenny, a young Canadian woman whose husband is often gone for weeks at a time for work. In her spare time between infrequent work shifts, Jenny begins speaking a bit to Rachelle, the only First Nations Woman in the neighborhood. Just as the two women begin to strike up a relationship, Rachelle vanishes, and Jenny is determined to find out what happened.

This book felt more like a study of Jenny as a person than anything else. I don't think I liked Jenny, but I found her an interesting and fairly well-written character, and that's what sucked me into this book. She's a naive and ignorant white woman who's spent her whole life in the industrial town of Prince George. From the very beginning, the book is very upfront with how everyone in the town views First Nations people with Jenny's friends openly disparaging Rachelle. The book is written in first person, so we get to see everything Jenny's thinking and feeling while she goes on her journey. Her naïveté, combined with a healthy dose of crime TV, makes her overly confident in her ability to solve Rachelle's disappearance. She does some questionable things in her search for justice, but as the summary says, she really is misguided. She spends the whole book throwing herself at the mystery, and many of her assumptions about her hometown are challenged.

I also felt like the setting was very clearly described. I'm an American with only middling knowledge of Canada, so I wasn't familiar with Prince George at all before reading Fireweed. Haddad does a good job setting the scene with all the talk of the industry and environment, as well as the descriptions of all the characters. When I saw Haddad's bio at the end of the book and saw she'd written extensively about Prince George, the incredibly detailed description made a lot of sense. Also, as someone who has family in a small town in Missouri with that "white trash" air wafting around, the vibe of the setting and the people who lived there felt distantly familiar.

The ending has me feeling a little conflicted. Everything ties up quite neatly, but Jenny has just gone right back to where she was when the novel started. I can see it as an allegory for how women both Native and white continue to go missing, and nothing truly gets done to stop more women from going missing, just like how Jenny went on her journey searching for Rochelle only to return to her old life, Rachelle occasionally crossing her mind. The world keeps on spinning, unchanged. I find the ending unsatisfying, but I guess it makes sense for Jenny's character.

My main critique would be that the writing feels a little unclear at times. Sometimes something would happen, and it felt like some of the key details weren't provided until later when Jenny was reflecting on the events. Other times, Jenny comes to conclusions without providing explanation to how she reached that conclusion. It wasn't bad enough that I couldn't follow the plot, but it did leave me scratching my head every now and again.

Overall, I enjoyed Fireweed. The writing style was easy to get immersed in, and the premise was intriguing, and I never felt bored while reading this.

Rating 3.5/5, rounding up to 4

Content warnings for racism, sexism, sexual assault, mentions of domestic abuse