I Can Make This Promise: family secrets & identity

 Christine Day's debut middle grade novel, I Can Make This Promise, conveys a perspective of a 12-year old Native American girl who only knows that her mother was adopted by a White couple so she has no connection to the Native side of her heritage.  Although Edie is constantly "othered" by people asking her "what are you?", she feels as though her parents would've shared anything they knew with her.  That is until she and her friends stumble across a box of keepsakes in Edie's attic full of mysterious photos, letters, and postcards.  The woman in the photos looks just like Edie and even shares her name.  When Edie asks her parents, they act shifty and change the subject.  Why would they keep something like that a secret? 

Edie and her friends approach this sensitive mystery in different ways. One of her friends urges Edie to talk about it with her parents more while her other friend thinks they should dig for more clues on their own.  The journey that Edie takes to find out the truth is both heart-breaking, yet, hopeful.  Day puts real faces and emotions to the atrocities Native people suffered at the hands of the U.S. Government.  Readers can take the snippets of people mentioned in the story and conduct further research about who they were and why they were considered activists of their time.  Readers can also relate to the changing friendships and history that follow them into adolescence.  Edie decides to cut ties with someone who refuses to be an ally to her and that is a situation that readers can discuss.  

As a teacher, librarian and parent, I would definitely share this book with my students and daughter.  The themes of identity, family, friendship, and historical power and injustice offer a lot of important conversations that connect to other media.  Share the book trailer below with readers to gauge their interest in this story:

Initially I read Day's second novel, The Sea in Winter and was impressed by the authentic voice her characters use while teaching the reader about the upper northwestern U.S. and the Native tribes located there.  I'm looking forward to reading more by Day!