New teen thriller ‘Sisters in the Wind’ finds drama in hidden identities

At a moment when young adult literature is dominated by dystopias and romantasies, one bestselling author has dispensed with dragons and death matches. Who needs them, when you can suck readers into dramas about foster care, grave robbers, meth dealers or high-stakes, high-school hockey matches?

Author Angeline Boulley has written her third thriller for teenagers, Sisters in the Wind, which came out the first week in September.

All of her books have been set in Native American communities in northern Michigan, like the ones where Boulley’s Ojibwe family has lived for generations.

Her new book features a heroine named Lily, a young woman on the run after a series of tragedies. Some characters, and some of those tragedies, will be familiar to readers of Firekeeper’s Daughter and Warrior Girl Unearthed, the two earlier books in Boulley’s loosely connected series.

An enrolled member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, Boulley worked for her tribe for decades, then served as director of the Office of Indian Education at the U.S. Department of Education.

“So my stories are all set in this fictionalized version of my tribe and my community,” Boulley told NPR. Her characters’ conversations include debates over the pros and cons of tribal enrollment and issues around casinos, Ojibwe mythology, the preservation of ancient medical practices and generational trauma from boarding schools.

Boulley grew up in New Buffalo, Mich. When she was in high school, a friend told her about a cute new student. Boulley never met him; she was an overachiever and he hung out with kids involved with drugs. He turned out to be an undercover police officer. (“This was before 21 Jump Street, with Johnny Depp!” she laughed.) But still, she wondered at the time: What if they’d met, and liked each other? What if, somehow, he needed her help?

“And then I had this thought that stayed with me for 36 years,” she said. “And it was, why would some undercover drug investigation need the help of an ordinary 18-year-old Ojibwe girl?”

And why would that girl help him? Those questions became the basis of Boulley’s first book. She pitched Firekeeper’s Daughter to literary agents on Twitter. It sold in 2019 for more than $1 million. And in 2021, it became an instant bestseller. So was her next novel, 2023’s Warrior Girl Unearthed, which she says she pitched like this: “It’s indigenous Lara Croft, but instead of raiding tombs, she’s raiding museums and private collections to retrieve stolen ancestors and sacred items that do not belong in museums and in private collections. But the main character is 16, and so none of her heists go the way that she plans.”

Warrior Girl Unearthed is a favorite book of educational consultant Becky Hill, who attended a conference in August in Ann Arbor, Mich., about amplifying indigenous narratives. Boulley was the keynote speaker. “I had never read a book that discussed museums and Native American artifacts and the theft of them and the return of them,” Hill said. “And I went to school on a reservation from K through 8 and I cannot recall any books that had to do with Native American people other than The Indian in the Cupboard.”

Hill mentioned a 2018 study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Cooperative Children’s Book Center that showed Native characters are only represented in 1% of children’s literature. (In 2024, that number rose to 3%.) Boulley’s work, she says, is still a rarity.

At the conference, a group of musicians performed a traditional honor song for Boulley. And there was a land acknowledgement. Boulley told the audience she appreciated it. “But whenever you hear a land acknowledgement,” she added with a smile, “you should go and buy a book by a Native author.”