Fire Song

After his sister commits suicide, Shane’s mother refuses to leave the house or go back to work. Eventually, not only are Shane’s prospects for escaping to university quickly vanishing, but his self-obsessed girlfriend, Tara, doesn’t even realize that anything’s wrong except that Shane’s mind isn’t entirely on her. While it seems obvious his sister’s suicide is to blame, another part of the equation is that Shane is secretly seeing David on the side (or at least, he was). Set against the backdrop of an Indigenous reserve, Shane (Anishinaabe) and the triangle of love and emotion with David and Tara forces him to make some tough decisions about the present and his future.

Though a cliché love triangle at first glance, the sexually fluid orientation of Fire Song’s protagonist gives an added dimension to the story, highlighting the confusion and difficulty of existing in the world outside of a heterosexual framework. Of course, what sometimes ends up at the forefront is the protagonist’s feelings of conflict while the feelings of the girlfriend are left unexplored or are made overly simplistic within the overall narrative. In this case, Tara is depicted as selfish (which, to be honest, she is at times), and her development proceeds with very little nuance in comparison to Shane and David. In addition, there are a number of instances of body shaming in earlier parts of the book that do not bring anything further to the book and could easily have been avoided.

What is important here is the fact that there are so few depictions of queer Indigenous characters in young adult fiction, and so Fire Song fills a much-too-common gap in existing LGBTQ+ literature for teens. This is not the only reason Fire Song is important, however; the plot and characters—flaws and all—make a complex, character-driven novel that will entertain, enlighten and hopefully give teen readers a lot of food for thought.

Based on his movie of the same name, Jones’ debut novel is a tragic but hopeful exploration of queer Indigenous life in a less than accepting community. In the end, Shane’s story reveals the precariousness of being queer in an Indigenous community that is tied to the past, while struggling in a contemporary world shaped by colonialism.