(3.5 stars)
"Being broke germinates all sorts of magical thinking." Fireweed is a bit of a dreary book about intergenerational abuse and poverty in a place called Prince George in Western Canada. The city is known for racism and violence against Indigenous people, particularly women, with Highway 16 nicknamed the Highway of Tears for all the Indigenous women who have gone missing or been found murdered along it. The book is written from the perspective of Jenny Hayes, a white women, who has grown up imbued in this racist context: "No one had ever had to educate me. It was a rule so self-evidence, it was innate—felt, as palpable as the dank. You stayed on your side, and they stayed on theirs." Except she's lonely, and becomes fascinated by her Indigenous neighbour, surveilling her, and trying to strike up a friendship.

When her neighbour goes missing, Jenny comes face to face with the town's racism as she galvinises into action only to find nobody really cares about missing Indigenous women. Her motives are primarily selfish I think, a chance to break free from: "Reliable old Jenny, always exactly where you expected her to be, guileless, in her stonewashed jeans and Keds." This makes her a bit too white saviour to be likeable: "Even if they were selling their bodies, no one deserved a fate like that—to end up among the beer cans, the A&W cartons, the thistle, the hemlock, the fireweed all the litter the highway's shoulder housed."

At the same time you can't help but feel sorry for Jenny as a product of the poverty and racism she grew up wthin: "My old bedroom, the walls still sponge-painted that same awful pink. PeptoBismol, calamine. The color of feeling itchy." Her dysfunctional mother continues to exploit her. Her relationship isn't ideal, with her keeping "wife insurance" hidden away. Her husband betrays her when she is raped. She doesn't like sex: "A whole lot of fanfare for the same sensation you could get from tearing down a rutted road." She (or her husband) are infertile: "She'd never had any kids, her body a lemon—like mine."

Looking for her neighbour Rachelle busts Jenny out of the world she is trapped in: "caught in the same loop, each day melded into the next." That's when the book gets a little faster and less dreary: "Mystery wasn't going to solve itself." However it feels a little Nancy Drew: somewhat at the expense of her neighbour rather than with and for her. Only pick it up if you're in the mood for a sombre and depressing read.

This is a singularly engaging and suspenseful variation on an archetypal mystery form: a committed amateur sets out to get to the bottom of the apparent disappearance of a friend…when no one else in her world, even the police, seems to take the missing woman’s disappearance seriously.

The setting of ‘Fireweed’ is brilliantly original. It takes place in far-Western Canada, a wild, wooded landscape that, paradoxically, is marred by mines, factories, and rural sprawl. Jenny Hayes, the novel’s narrator and protagonist, is a smart but sparsely educated mall gift shop employee. She’s young, recently married, and longing to get pregnant.

Jenny has recently attempted to befriend her neighbor, a beautiful Native American widow with two children. There’s a substantial Indian population in the area, most of whom, as their white counterparts see them, are lazy and unworthy of their attention. Jenny and her neighbor are just working through their mutual distrust when the Native woman disappears, and her mixed-race children are taken in by social services.
Finding her friend—or at least discovering the woman’s fate—becomes Jenny’s quest. She makes slow progress in finding her friend, but does discover the depth of prejudice toward Native peoples held by the authorities and even her own friends and family.

Her quest leads her to a searing and tragic discovery about her dystopian world and its assumptions about the ‘Other’ it so disregards and dismisses.

Fireweed was an interesting character study but one that was, unfortunately, very challenging for me to get through; taking me much longer to read than I had hoped. Many times, I was close to a DNF but my curiosity got the best of me. The description of this book feels accurate but it didn't quite live up to what I wanted it to be. Like other reviewers have mentioned, the writing and the characters feel insensitive and a little too "white savior" for my preference. I'm not sure that I would recommend this book to anyone, especially not to those who are looking for a book that lifts up Indigenous stories.

DNF at 17%

I went into this book, based on its description, anticipating a Lynchian take on exploring and amplifying the stories of missing and murdered Indigenous women. What I found instead was a white narrator who was not only incredibly caught up in the minutia of her own life, but also was incredibly racist.

There were multiple instances of use of the “s——“ slur in reference to the solitary Native American character who speaks within the first quarter of the book, along with consistent reinforcement of negative stereotypes, like Indigenous people not being civilized enough to garden.

I would like to believe that the purpose of this was to try to challenge white readers who may hold unconscious bias or racist attitudes toward Indigenous folks to recognize the problems with these types of beliefs, but this likely good intention, for me, landed with a cringe-inducing thud.

It was quite painful to read, and when the lead character received one opportunity to correct her casually racist behavior, checked herself on it, and then went right back to the same behavior, I decided to put it down. I’m sure there is a story arc somewhere about her challenging her beliefs, but through the way this narrative is set up, I am leery of white saviorism being a big part of Jenny’s story. A Goodreads review flagged with a spoiler warning also reinforced my apprehension and made me not want to finish this book.

The author’s writing is capable of being quite beautiful, but it felt a bit dissonant when the narrator, who refers to herself as “trailer trash,” occasionally waxes poetic with a vocabulary that seems more befitting of her well-educated author than her own voice.

I was really looking forward to this, but ultimately it was so much heavier handed than what I was hoping for. Stories about Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, especially the horrific Highway of Tears, deserve to be told, but I think this story would have been more effectively told by an Indigenous author or at the very least with more care to exclude less racist language. I think it’s in pretty poor taste to have this published by someone who isn’t Indigenous.

Thank you very much to Astra House and Lauren Haddad for the e-arc.

As someone who has been affected by the MMIW epidemic, I really don’t care for unnecessary white voices on this subject matter.

Not really sure what this book was trying to say by the end. This was a painful read. The unedited stream of conscious was incredibly boring. The protagonist was cartoonish ignorant.

I should have DNF’d this book

This book just wasn’t for me. I couldn’t keep going unfortunately. The writing style was just so strange and disjointed. It felt like it was trying to do a stream of consciousness but it was executed badly. I’ve read other books in this style and loved them.

Furthermore, the plot wasn’t appealing or intriguing.

Thanks to Astra Publishing House and NetGalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review

I really wanted to like this a lot, but I didn't like it as much as I thought I would. It had a good mystery but it didn't flow as well nor was it fast paced as I had hoped.

DNF @25%

I was excited about this book thinking that it would be a thriller highlighting the fact that indigenous women go missing constantly without being searched for like white women are. This is a very scary and real fact and I hoped for some social commentary that highlights how wrong this is while uplifting indigenous voices.

I knew this was written by a white woman but hoped the sensitive topic would be treated with care, but unfortunately it just rubbed me the wrong way that the main character was the white woman and all the focus was on her. There were so many racist stereotypes mentioned and I understand the author was trying to portray how horrible these assumptions can be... but I really don't see the need for them here.

It was an interesting one to read, exploring important topics like racism, sexism. But I think I liked the first half od the book more than the second half which was a but of a character study and I am usually not the one who likes that. Might be just a personal preference. Worth a read in any case.

Slowburns are fun but this was a little too slow to not become boring. Thank you to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Netgallery and Astra Publishing House for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This story follows Jenny Hayes as she navigates life as a housewife, infertility, and the disappearance of her First Nations neighbor, Rachelle.

If you want to read a story about a protagonist with a White Savior complex, this book is for you. I had very high expectations for this book, namely that justice would be done to highlight the MMIW movement. This book significantly missed the mark. I was disappointed that this story focused very little on the Indigenous experience and instead was just another white protagonist's perspective. Jenny is a white, bored housewife who believes she is going to solve Rachelle's case and takes it upon herself to investigate, all the while imposing herself in another missing girls' search and Indigenous community.

The lack of alternative perspective and lack of story development led to several problematic stereotypes:
- Calling an Indigenous character "the man with the braid" instead of giving him a name for most of the book.
-Jenny's assumption that "the man with the braid" was abusive based solely on his looks. This reinforces the stereotype of Indigenous men engaging in DV.
- Using racist terms like "sq--," which were unnecessary and harmful.
-"Indian time" was mentioned and depicted several times.
-MMIW go missing because they like to "party."
-MMIW go missing because they are engaging in sex work.
-Indigenous people can't garden/plant.
-Indigenous people littering the streets of the big city because of their substance misuse.

I read that the author owed this book to the people of Prince George. Unfortunately, this book is a complete disservice to Indigenous people, as there were no positive attributes of Indigenous people or culture highlighted within this work.

I will not recommend this book to others due to the harmful narrative. I would especially caution Indigenous readers (like myself) from picking this book up.

Thank you to Net Galley and Astra Publishing House for the ARC. I enjoyed the first part, but because the story stayed slow paced and meandering, I soon grew bored. I liked the writing style at first but it became tedious to read towards the middle.

This book follows Jenny, a young house wife in Prince George, BC, Canada. She gets involved with her Native/Indigenous neighbor, Rachelle, a woman despised in the neighborhood for her race. Jenny has had difficulty getting pregnant, and is jealous of Rachelle who has two daughters. The book paints all Native Women as sluts and prositutes, and refers to them with slurs. During this time a white woman disappears on the Trail of Tears and everyone goes looking. Then Rachelle disappears and Jenny learns that many, many Native women disappear all the time and no one does anything about it. Jenny decided to investigate and this is where the problems really begin for me. One, why does she actually care? What is her motivation'? She only met with the women twice. And seemed to despise and distain her. There was a LOT of victim blaming in this book, and that never gets cleaned up. Jenny doesn't feel like the right person to be interrogating this. I felt some sympathy for Jenny as a person, but I didn't like her, or the fact that her "investigations" and the evidence is only explained through her own rationalizations and she is a VERY UNRELIABLE narrator. Made me feel crazy and wonder why I would spend time listening to Jenny, who is so out of touch its embarrassing.

The good:
Gorgeous cover
Characters are well drawn
Deceptions are vivid
Ecological elements are lovely

The bad:
Tooo much detail on the mundane
Jenny was okay but everyone else was unlikable or just stereotypical projections in Jenny’s head
All the men are horrible or worse
All the women as victims
Victim blaming

DNF!

Thank you to NetGalley for this e-arc, but it was Not Good.

I’m echoing other reviews I’ve read when I say this, but I don’t know why the author thought it was appropriate to write this book about a white woman centering herself in an indigenous woman’s story. It was so painful to read about the fumbled attempts Jenny (mc) made to find her missing indigenous neighbor, all the while trying to hide her search from her racist friends and family. Pathetic.

The writing itself was bad too. This was almost unreadable. Sorry. 😬

The writing
I highlighted so many passages in this book - I must try and remember to come back to this review after the book has been released, to share my favourites with you! I found Haddad's writing style really elegant - some beautiful language and imagery, but without overburdening or purple style choices. A lot of time in this book is spent in the mundane and melancholy, and I found myself transported into these little vignettes (and not bored at all).

Haddad's writing reminded me a lot of some of my favourite works from Ottessa Mosfegh - the melancholy of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, and the unsettling and unreliable narration of Death in Her Hands. I flew through this book and did not struggle to follow or have to check things (though I did happily assume anything odd was down to unreliable narration).

The main character
Jenny is a flawed and unlikeable character, at least to me, but not a flat one. I found her wholly developed and believable, at times I pitied her and at times I wanted to shake some sense into her. I think the context of her life is well developed, and Haddad paints a picture of family, friends, and partner relationships that provide ample tinder for Jenny's behaviour and reasoning.

At times she's an unreliable narrator, with her emotional states influencing her inner thoughts and reasoning to the point where she sometimes makes wild and insensible leaps of logic. I can see how this might leave other readers a bit lost - I has interpreted these leaps as reflecting Jenny's inner turmoil, and I very much enjoyed the inclusion of these passages and felt it added a lot to Jenny's characterisation and the context for her behaviour. There are things introduced that could feel like loose threads, or red herrings, if you're reading this from a place of trying to figure out what happened to Rachelle or (view spoiler). Personally, many of the things that Jenny thought or fixed on were immediately suspect to me and so I never tried to figure out how things fit in the big picture.

Centring a white narrative
This book loosely covers the disappearance of Jenny's indigenous neighbour, and her subsequent interactions with the indigenous community as she personally investigates what happened. As other reviews have covered (and in much greater detail than I will), this includes mention of the Highway of Tears and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. While these real and traumatic events are featured, they are considered only from Jenny's naive and reductive perspective, and therefore not really given the weight and consideration that they might deserve.

Personally, I read this book as being a detailed but excoriating exploration of a character who exhibits white saviour, white feminist and Pretendian sentiments at various stages of the book. I could not find an interview or similar with the author to explore this in more detail, but certainly my own interpretation of this character and the book as a whole was not endorsing of Jenny's behaviour or reasoning but was instead an obvious criticism of how white women centre themselves in the narratives and experiences of non-white women.

As a white woman, I found this angle to be of personal interest to me and was anticipating a problematic character. I do think this book needs to be correctly billed - the representation of indigenous characters is reductive and flat, and I think Haddad's intentions could likely still have been achieved if she'd presented a more nuanced view. We only see these characters through Jenny's eyes, and thus with her harmful stereotypes and inner thoughts.

Conclusion

I will be careful in how I recommend this book - it is not a mystery thriller, it is an exploration of how one white woman in a small town attaches herself to her missing neighbour and inserts herself into a narrative of her own construction. That was a fascinating read, for me, and the writing made it truly enjoyable.
However, this book does take an incredibly reductive and harmful perspective, and I would not talk about it or recommend it in the context of MMIWG, own voices or first nation perspectives. I don't feel qualified to comment on the release date timings, but would agree with other reviewers who do not feel this title should be attached to the National Day for MMIWG or even part of that conversation.

Wider reading

This book does not give a good introduction or accurate reflection to themes of race, white saviourism, or non-white perspectives in Canada. I would encourage you to consume media that does, and I recommend:

Kim TallBear has a great article about the recent rise in, and history of, Pretendians (white folks claiming indian heritage, often based on dubious genetic testing).

Birdie is a beautiful and eerie novel with loosely flowing time and a narrative exploring the lives of a family of Cree women. This does include trauma and SA, but with a focus on the protagonist's journey of healing. Some beautiful imagery and language.

Monkey Beach beautiful imagery again and a vivid family portrait from Eden Robinson, a member of the Haisla and Heiltsuk First Nations. I'd recommend this if you like melancholy and magical realism, like Emily St John Mandel.

The Berry Pickers is a stunning and poignant exploration of identity, loss, and overcoming hardships and trauma.

DNF - This book requires very serious intervention on the part of an editor & a sensitivity writer. The author seems to be totally, & intentionally, ignorant of an entire group of people who have experienced atrocious violence. This book is an absolute crapshoot of a story, with poor writing, racial slurs for the sake of using racial slurs, & is doused in an ignorance no poorly ploted story could make relevant. It's abysmally disheartening to see such a book be published. Both the author & the publishing house need to do better..

DNF at 32%!

Lauren Haddad’s *Fireweed* is a powerful, thought-provoking novel set in the industrial north of Prince George, Canada, where simmering tension unearths complex questions of privilege, cultural bias, and the ethics of intervention. Through the character of Jenny Hayes—a suburban housewife yearning for a child—Haddad tackles nuanced and uncomfortable themes, shedding light on the chasms that separate communities in a seemingly ordinary neighborhood.

The story begins with Jenny’s resentment and envy of her First Nations neighbor, Rachelle, who appears to neglect what Jenny desires most: a family. Jenny’s frustration and judgment are juxtaposed with her uneasy friendships and her own mother’s indifference, painting a picture of a woman whose sense of purpose is tied to her own preconceived notions of right and wrong. Haddad subtly critiques Jenny’s well-meaning but misguided attempts to "help," which reveal a more profound moral conflict when Rachelle goes missing.

As the novel unfolds, Jenny embarks on an amateur investigation to find Rachelle, navigating the complexities of racial and social divides. The narrative highlights the disturbing discrepancy in media coverage between Rachelle and another missing woman, Beth Tremblay, underlining the systemic inequities that render certain lives more visible than others. Jenny’s interactions with the Métis community bring to light her inherent biases, often making her character hard to sympathize with—a challenge that some readers may find polarizing.

Pros:
One of *Fireweed*'s strengths is its cast of diverse characters who bring varied cultural and social perspectives into focus. Haddad’s portrayal of Jenny’s inner conflict is insightful, making readers question whether well-intentioned actions can, in fact, exacerbate harm.

Cons:
However, the novel’s slow build-up may challenge some readers' patience, and certain scenes and character interactions feel disjointed, occasionally detracting from the flow. Jenny, as the main character, is difficult to fully connect with, which may make it hard for readers to remain fully engaged with the story.

The vivid, wild setting and the looming threat of an unreliable narrator make this a gripping read that’s tough to put down. Each page builds suspense, pulling you deeper into its mysteries.

This a fiery and passionate novel about family, love, and the complexities of identity. It's a powerful and moving story that will stay with you long after you've finished reading.

A white woman proceeds on a "misguided investigation" and that premise leads the reader on a pointless journey to what end? An epilogue that provides "faith" that all will turn out right for misguided, privileged white women?