The Seed Keeper

A Novel

By: Diane Wilson

Narrated by: Kyla García

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 Dakhota 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.

©2021 Diane Wilson (P)2021 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Wonderful Story

This book was recommended by a very good friend. I don’t think this is something I would have picked up. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in our earth, our agriculture, and our history. I have a new respect for the people who inhabited our land before we did.

Incredible

A story of great power to a gardener who hears plants and trees, and feels the pain of soil neglected by lack of compost and tortured by chemicals.

Old Wisdom

A story of circles within circles coming full circle with wisdom and precious understandings. An experience of healing.

Beautifully Nuancing Both Sides

In all of its twists and turns in storyline, The Seed Keeper” presents an unvarnished yet compassionate view of the tragic loss of family, community and homeland by the Dakota peoples at the hands of the white “settlers”.
Wilson exposes and explains the underlying resentment still underneath the surface of both groups in a way that I, as the reader, hadn’t heretofore thought much about.
The tough decisions with unknowable consequences made by farmers as chemical agra-businesses roll over small family farms with the same impunity with which the government and whites stole Indigenous lands provides a tensely moving backdrop for the Seed Keeper as she finds her way back to her people’s ways.

I absolutely recommend this book

For me, this book did not grab my attention right away. That being said, I’m glad I gave it time because I really truly enjoyed it. So much so, that I’ll probably read it again in 6 to 12 months. This book evolved into a story that made me feel and appreciate the natural world around you. There are many more things I want to say that I appreciated about this book, but they would spoil it, so I will just tell you that you should read it. :)