Daughters of the Deer

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In this haunting historical novel, Danielle Daniel explores her ancestral ties to the Algonquin territories of the 1600s, inspired by a family link to a girl murdered near Trois-Rivières during early French settlement. Marie, an Algonquin woman of the Weskarini Deer Clan, has already suffered the loss of her first husband and children to an Iroquois raid. After another attack, her chief urges her to remarry for the clan's survival. As a healer who honors her people's traditions, Marie is reluctant to accept Pierre, a green-eyed ex-soldier from France, as her husband. The dwindling population of her clan, ravaged by diseases brought by settlers, leaves her feeling trapped; a marriage to Pierre could solidify an alliance with the French against their common enemies. Marie grapples with the painful choice of moving on from her deceased husband to a man whose beliefs clash with her own. The narrative also follows Jeanne, the first child of this new union, who finds herself caught between cultures. As she matures, her two-spirited identity is met with misunderstanding and rejection from both her father's world and the settlers. Through Jeanne's poignant story, Daniel sheds light on the historical violence against Indigenous women and the disruption of First Nations culture, opening a door to a narrative long overlooked.