Book 3 of the Firekeeper’s Daughter Series
18-year-old Lucy Smith grew up in foster care after her father passed away. She now works as a waitress in a diner. A handsome stranger asks to meet with her at the diner, he tells her he’s a lawyer who wants to help Native American kids who were adopted reconnect with their birth families.
Lucy’s dad always told her her heritage was Italian on her mum’s side, and has to learn about her Native American roots. Lucy tells the lawyer, John B Jameson, she’s not interested and decides to run to another town. However, when she finishes her last shift there’s an explosion at the diner where she works and Lucy is wounded.
Lucy wakes up in the hospital where an unknown lady is by her bedside, as well as the lawyer. The woman is called Daunis Fontayne, and it’s clear that she and the lawyer have history. Daunis tells Lucy about Lucy’s half-sister Lily, who was her best friend.
After Lucy leaves the hospital, Jamie (Jameson), Daunis and she move into a hotel together for Lucy’s convalescence. Daunis, who is obviously quite wealthy, is picking up the tab for this. Little by little, Lucy learns more about her birth mother, and her half-sister Lily – and Ojibwe culture.
The reader learns more about Lucy’s past, a little about her dad, her step-mother, and the reason why Lucy ended up in foster care instead of with her step-mother. And we learn about the horrible families she stayed with.
I loved the first two books in this series, but this one was a big eye opener. Lucy is told to say she’s half Mexican instead of half native (when she first suspected that her mum was Native American), and the things that happened to her whilst she was in foster care were appalling.
Read for the PopSugar Reading Challenge 2026
Prompt 19: A book about teen angst
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
