Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Firekeeper’s Daughter, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Justice
Generational Trauma and Bigotry
Ceremony, Pride, and Healing
Love, Honesty, and Respect
Coming of Age
Family and Community
Summary
Analysis
At first, Daunis smells pleasant smells she associates with camping. But she realizes she’s in a small aluminum trailer, and she can smell a piss pot. Jamie says Daunis’s name and pulls her close, but his breath smells awful, and she tells him so. Amused, he observes that she cares about his breath when they’ve been kidnapped. This wakes Daunis up the rest of the way. Jamie says that he totally deserved Daunis’s punch. He was just trying to boost his career, but then he got to know her. Continuing, Jamie says that Levi and Mike came to his house last night and invited him to a party. Mike tasered him and he woke up here this morning. Daunis has been here about six hours.
The timing might not be ideal, but it’s significant that Jamie is willing to admit he was wrong and made mistakes in this passage. Even if he and Daunis have butted heads throughout the investigation regarding whether he’s doing the right thing by working as an agent, he seems to now accept that at least some aspects of his job aren’t ethical—such as the parts that require him to lie to and use people like Daunis. He also confirms that Mike is involved in the meth cell.
Themes
Realizing that Dana drugged her with a date-rape drug, Daunis asks if Dana said anything when she brought Daunis here. Jamie is shocked—a guy in a snowmobile helmet dropped Daunis off and tasered Jamie again before chaining Daunis to the bed. Daunis asks if it was Grant, but Jamie doesn’t know. She flinches when Jamie tries to touch her and then says that soon, Mom and Auntie will contact Ron, and they’ll all discover that Daunis and Jamie are missing. Jamie says that Ron should be getting the satellite tracking info from Jamie’s watch. Daunis stands and listens. She can hear gentle waves and asks if Jamie has heard any Kelvin wakes. He hasn’t. They realize they’re on the east side of Sugar Island, in the cliffs and caves, where there’s no service. Nobody is coming for them.
Daunis and Jamie realize that the meth cell is likely bigger than they realize—in addition to Levi, Mike, and Jamie, there’s the person who dropped Daunis off last night. This means that there is yet another opportunity for Daunis’s loved ones to betray her, depending on who this person is. Then, as Daunis and Jamie realize where they are on Sugar Island and why they haven’t been rescued yet, they deduce that for now, they can rely only on each other. Put simply, it’s essential they put aside any lingering conflict or differences so they can escape this situation alive.
Themes
