Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley: Book Review

Warrior Girl Unearthed is the second book by best-selling author Angeline Boulley. Released in May 2023, it takes readers back to Sugar Island with the Firekeeper family. Perry finds herself being forced to spend her summer in an internship program with her tribe. Along the way, women from her community start disappearing. Perry finds herself looking at the past and the present, and wondering how far she would go to bring the women home.

Synopsis from Goodreads

Perry Firekeeper-Birch was ready for her Summer of Slack, but instead, after a fender bender that was entirely not her fault, she’s stuck working to pay back her Auntie Daunis for repairs to the Jeep.

Thankfully, she has the other outcasts of the summer program, Team Misfit Toys, and even her twin sister, Pauline. Together, they ace obstacle courses, plan vigils for missing women in the community, and make sure summer doesn’t feel so lost after all.

But when she attends a meeting at a local university, Perry learns about the “Warrior Girl”, an ancestor whose bones and knife are stored in the museum archives, and everything changes. Perry has to return Warrior Girl to her tribe. Determined to help, she learns all she can about NAGPRA, the federal law that allows tribes to request the return of ancestral remains and sacred items. The university has been using legal loopholes to hold onto Warrior Girl and twelve other Anishinaabe ancestors’ remains, and Perry and the Misfits won’t let it go on any longer.

Using all of their skills and resources, the Misfits realize a heist is the only way to bring back the stolen artifacts and remains for good. But there is more to this repatriation than meets the eye, as more women disappear and Pauline’s perfectionism takes a turn for the worse. As secrets and mysteries unfurl, Perry and the Misfits must fight to find a way to make things right – for the ancestors and their community.

My Opinions

While Warrior Girl Unearthed is listed as a sequel to Firekeeper’s Daughter, it is more of a companion novel. This one is set in the summer of 2014, whereas the previous was more like 2004. That said, the date the story is set doesn’t play into the story that much. And you can easily read Warrior Girl Unearthed without having read Firekeeper’s Daughter, though some details may spoil the ending.

Boulley takes us back to Sugar Island and the lives of the Indigenous people there and in the nearby city of Sault St Marie. While we’ve met several characters in the previous book, there are still plenty more to meet.

This story examines the damage done to Indigenous people in the name of “science” and “research”. There are a few mentions of the residential schools; this one focuses more on the artifacts taken from their ancestors while they were alive and after they died. Throughout the book, quotes from different sources discuss the repatriation of these artifacts and how organizations are not doing their due diligence to make the process easier.

Also examined are the missing and murdered women and girls of Indigenous descent. This is not a new problem, and is one that seems only to be getting worse with time. Why are these females being taken? Is there a mystical force out there taking them? Or are they being considered less than because of their racial identity? Or could it be that no one takes the families seriously? No one really knows.

Boulley writes her stories with heart, passion, and knowledge. Besides being an Indigenous woman, she also worked in the U.S. Department of Education as the Director of the Office of Indian Education.

While this is considered a young adult book, everyone can learn something from it. Boully’s new novel, Sisters in the Wind, will be released in the fall. I am looking forward to reading it.

Are you looking for some more books to read? Check out my bookish lists, book reviews, and monthly reading wrap-ups.