May 6, 2019
Grover, a member of the Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe, returns to the fictional Mozhay Point reservation (The Dance Boots and The Road Back to Sweetgrass) in northern Minnesota in this beautiful novel about powerful Ojibwe women working to unite their tribe and heal their families. Loretta Gallette, drowning in alcoholism and poverty, surrenders her three- and four-year-old daughters, Rain Dawn and Azure Sky, to the county and disappears. The story follows the children as they move through foster homes and are abused and neglected. Eventually, due to the persistence and determination of Loretta’s tribe, the Mozhay nation, as well as the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (a federal law that gives tribal governments exclusive jurisdiction over tribal children in matters of custody), the young girls are brought home to their tribe. As the girls struggle with the haunting absence of their mother and the emotional and physical damage from living in nightmarish foster care homes, they find comfort and strength—mainly from the women—of their home reservation. The girls hear family stories of strife and love; the broken childhood of their mother; the depression that eats at their uncle Junior, a Vietnam vet; the loss of tribal lands to white settlement; and the struggles many have had with alcohol, divorce, and domestic abuse. With gorgeous imagery and verdant prose, LeGarde Grover’s novel lays bare the pain and loss of indigenous women and children while simultaneously offering a ray of hope.