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The Seed Keeper

A Novel

by Diane Wilson

Narrator Kyla García

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Length 10 hours 42 minutes

Language English

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Bookseller recommendation

“Inspired by Dakota women sewing seeds into the hems of their dresses when they were forcibly removed from Minnesota in 1886, The Seed Keeper tells of Rosalie Iron Wing's story -- growing up in foster care, marrying a white man, and having a child. Much later, she discovers she still has Dakota family and tracks them down. She grieves, re-learns Dakota ways, and she protects the seeds of her ancestors. This important novel reminds us of the lasting damage war, forced migration, and the boarding schools stealing Native children away from their families have had, even today.”
— Valerie • Tsunami Books

Bookseller recommendation

“The Seed Keeper shimmers like the horizon in the summer heat—depending on how you look at it, it is a stunning historical novel, a paean to the land and the plants that people it, a prayer to Dakota women wading through generational trauma. It is all of these things, and so much more. Wilson deftly weaves together multiple voices to bring the original relationship of reciprocity between people and Earth into the present day. This is a clarion call to think about seeds as much more than commodities: Seeds are stories; seeds are possibilities; seeds are past and future generations. Powerful and compelling, The Seed Keeper will be treasured by readers who enjoy Robin Wall Kimmerer's lyricism, Barbara Kingsolver's activist bent, and Louise Erdrich's historical fiction.”
— Hannah • Avid Bookshop

Summary

Rosalie Iron Wing has grown up in the woods with her father, Ray, a former science teacher who tells her stories of plants, of the stars, of the origins of the Dakhóta people. Until, one morning, Ray doesn't return from checking his traps. Told she has no family, Rosalie is sent to live with a foster family in nearby Mankato—where the reserved, bookish teenager meets rebellious Gaby Makespeace, in a friendship that transcends the damaged legacies they've inherited.

On a winter's day many years later, Rosalie returns to her childhood home. A widow and mother, she has spent the previous two decades on her white husband's farm, finding solace in her garden even as the farm is threatened first by drought and then by a predatory chemical company. Now, grieving, Rosalie begins to confront the past, on a search for family, identity, and a community where she can finally belong. In the process, she learns what it means to be descended from women with souls of iron—women who have protected their families, their traditions, and a precious cache of seeds through generations of hardship and loss, through war and the insidious trauma of boarding schools.

Weaving together the voices of four women, The Seed Keeper is a beautifully told story of reawakening, of remembering our original relationship to the seeds and, through them, to our ancestors.

Fiction