The Sowers

Minnesota, 1970s. Rosalie Iron Wing grew up in the woods with her father, who told her stories of plants and stars from their Dakhóta origins. But one day he doesn't come home. HASTwelve-year-old Rosalie is placed in the care of a white foster family. Many years later, Rosalie returns to the places of her childhood and reconnects with a buried past and forgotten traditions. Throughout the pages, her fate intertwines with that of three other Dakhóta women: Gaby, her teenage friend; Darlene Kills Deer, her great-aunt; and Mary Blackbird, driven from her land in the 1860s. Descendants of lineages broken by colonialism, these four women with souls of steel reveal themselves to be linked by the cultivation of seeds – a know-how passed down from generation to generation. Because these seeds are promises of hope and renewed life, despite misery, injustice and mourning. Diane Wilson draws on the wounded memory of her ancestors to deliver a sensitive portrait of powerful characters and a people who have never stopped resisting. Translated from English (United States) by Nino S.Dufour