Bestselling Ojibwe novelist Angeline Boulley returns this fall with Sisters in the Wind, a young adult thriller that places a former foster youth at the heart of the action while spotlighting the stakes of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). The story follows Lucy Smith, an Ojibwe teen whose childhood is shaped by a carousel of placements before she begins, as a young adult, to reclaim safety, culture, and kin.
Told across two timelines and set in Michigan, the novel tracks Lucy’s past flight from people who harmed her in care and her present-day work supporting ICWA—the federal law designed to keep Native children connected to their families and tribes. As Lucy navigates threats old and new, she’s pulled into a high-pressure case that tests whether systems will honor tribal sovereignty or repeat the mistakes that sever children from their communities.
Boulley aims to show the difference between what happens when ICWA is ignored and when it’s implemented as intended. Rather than lecturing, the book uses a fast, propulsive mystery to reveal how caseworker decisions, court rulings, and everyday biases shape a child’s life. Along the way, readers encounter the familiar realities foster youth often describe—sudden moves, disrupted schooling, and the small humiliations that linger—set against the healing force of culture, language, and extended family.
Lucy’s journey is grounded in community: aunties who refuse to give up on her, peers who understand the scars of care, and tribal leaders working to protect the next generation. As the plot tightens, Sisters in the Wind argues that belonging is not a luxury but a lifeline—and that public policy has human faces.
The novel also lands in the long shadow of recent legal battles over ICWA, giving teens and adults alike a story that reframes headlines through one girl’s fight to be seen as family, not a file number. For readers outside child welfare, it’s a page-turner with heart; for those inside the system, it’s a reminder that the choices made in offices and courtrooms echo for years.