Daughters of the Deer

Daughters of the Deer is a compelling and emotional story by Indigenous author Danielle Daniel. This book stands out for me because the author focuses her story on her own ancestor, Marie. Marie was an Algonquin woman who lived near Trois-Rivières, Québec in the 1600's and readers witness her youth to her forced marriage to a French settler, her life on a seigneury and the raising of her children. 

Daniel's characters were well-drawn and wonderfully complex, and it is through three characters - Marie, her mixed-race, two-spirit daughter Jeanne and her husband, Pierre that the story is told. Personally, I found Marie's POV the strongest but the other two add interesting perspectives. 

Beautifully written and heartbreaking, this is a story that illustrates the impact of colonialism and the church and their ensuing trauma on the Indigenous peoples. Through Marie and Jeanne, readers learn about government marriage policies that forced teens to marry young, the church's abuse and forced indoctrination; the stark inequities between men and women and white and Indigenous; the importance of indigenous culture, community and ceremonies that connected them to their land and the vastly different views of the church and Indigenous culture when it came to LGBTIA2S+ people. 

Daughters of the Deer is a thought-provoking and emotional read and the story's connection to the author's own ancestry makes it even more poignant. I had both the print and eAudiobook and chose to listen to this story which is told by talented narrators.

Don't miss this compelling story that showcases the complexities of family, the deep-seated need for culture and the resiliency of the human spirit. I look forward to reading more from this author in the future.

My Rating: 4.5 stars

Author: Danielle Daniel

Genre: Historical Fiction, Indigenous, Canadian

Type and Source: eAudiobook from public library

Narrator: Jani Lauzon, Tyrone Savage, Befny Caribou

Run Time: 8 hours, 37 minutes

Publisher: Random House Audio

First Published: March 8, 2022

Book Description from GoodReads: In this haunting, groundbreaking, historical novel, Danielle Daniel imagines the lives of her ancestors in the Algonquin territories of the 1600s, a story inspired by her family link to a girl murdered near Trois-Rivières in the early days of French settlement.

Marie, an Algonquin woman of the Weskarini Deer Clan, lost her first husband and her children to an Iroquois raid. In the aftermath of another lethal attack, her chief begs her to remarry for the sake of the clan. Marie is a healer who honours the ways of her people, and Pierre, the green-eyed ex-soldier from France who wants her for his bride, is not the man she would choose. But her people are dwindling, wracked by white men's diseases and nearly starving every winter as the game retreats away from the white settlements. If her chief believes such a marriage will cement their alliance with the French against the Iroquois and the British, she feels she has no choice. Though she does it reluctantly, and with some fear--Marie is trading the memory of the man she loved for a man she doesn't understand at all, and whose devout Catholicism blinds him to the ways of her people.

This beautiful, powerful novel brings to life women who have literally fallen through the cracks of settler histories. Especially Jeanne, the first child born of the new marriage, neither white nor Weskarini, but caught between worlds. As she reaches adolescence, it becomes clear she is two-spirited. In her mother's culture, she would have been considered blessed, her nature a sign of special wisdom. But to the settlers of New France, and even to her own father, Jeanne is unnatural, sinful--a woman to be shunned, and worse.

And so, with the poignant story of Jeanne, Danielle Daniel imagines her way into the heart and mind of a woman at the origin of the long history of violence against Indigenous women and the deliberate, equally violent, disruption of First Nations culture--opening a door long jammed shut, so all of us can enter.