The Seed Keeper
A Novel
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A 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Big Reads Selection
Winner of the Minnesota Book Award
A haunting novel spanning several generations, The Seed Keeper follows a Dakhóta family's struggle to preserve their way of life, and their sacrifices to protect what matters most.
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 indelible 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.
Honors for The Seed Keeper:
Winner of the Minnesota Book Award in Fiction
A BuzzFeed "Best Book of Spring"
A Literary Hub "Most Anticipated Book of the Year"
A Bustle "Most Anticipated Debut Novel"
A Bon Appetit "Best Summer Read"
A Thrillist "Best New Book of Spring"
A Ms. Magazine "Best Book of the Year"
A Books Are Magic "Most Anticipated Book of the Year"
Named a "Most Anticipated Book of the Year" by The Millions
A Daily Beast "Best Summer Read"
About this Author
Diane Wilson (Dakhóta) is the author of a memoir, Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past, which won a Minnesota Book Award and was selected for the One Minneapolis One Read program, as well as a nonfiction book, Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life, which was awarded the Barbara Sudler Award from History Colorado. Her most recent essay, "Seeds for Seven Generations," was featured in the anthology A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota. Wilson has received a Bush Foundation Fellowship as well as awards from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, and the East Central Regional Arts Council. In 2018, she was awarded a 50 Over 50 Award from Pollen/Midwest. Wilson has served as the executive director for Dream of Wild Health and the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance, working to help rebuild sovereign food systems for Native people. She is a Mdewakanton descendent, enrolled on the Rosebud Reservation, and lives in Shafer, Minnesota.
Reviews
Praise for The Seed Keeper
"With compelling characters and images that linger long after the final page is turned, The Seed Keeper invokes the strength that women, land, and plants have shared with one another through the generations."--Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
"In chapters that shift among the perspectives of four Dakhóta women--including Rosalie's great-aunt, who grew plants because the seeds in her pocket were 'all that's left of my family'--Wilson tracks Rosalie's attempts to understand her family and her roots, and considers how memory cultivates a sense of connection to the land." --The New Yorker
"[A] moving and monumental debut novel." --Minneapolis Star Tribune
"[Wilson's] writing is almost like a lullaby, guiding you gently across the tale. There is poetry in the words, a love for nature you can feel seeping through each page." --Book Riot, "Best Books of 2021"
"[The Seed Keeper] is a gorgeous and moving work of fiction with memorable characters that will stay in your heart and body for a long time." --BuzzFeed, "Brilliant Books That Explore Our Relationship with Nature"
"Spend a long afternoon with this beautiful, immersive novel." --Bon Appetit Magazine, "Best Summer 2021 Reads"
"Like watching a garden grow from seed to harvest, this novel quietly unfolds to tell the story of several generations of Dakhóta women and the land that connects them." --The Daily Beast, "Best Summer Reads of 2021"
"[The Seed Keeper] tells the story of Rosalie Iron Wing, a Dakota woman who, after surviving the foster care system to make a life of her own in the world, must confront the harsh realities--climate change, capitalism--of contemporary farming life. In looking to her past for answers Rosalie finds unexpected communion with her ancestors, the women--strong, resilient, proud--who made her who she is."--Literary Hub
"This beautiful generational saga challenges conventional American history, asking us to reckon with the traumas brought upon Native Americans." --Observer, "Can't-Miss Books of Spring 2021"
"A powerful story recounting the attempted genocide of Indigenous people in America--and how they continue to survive." --Alma, "Best New Books of Spring 2021"
"It's a moving multi-generational story about the destruction of Native American families, communities and lands--but also about reconnection, hope and the natural world . . . Wilson offers a different kind of idealism: one where community, family, and the seeds can create the future we're seeking."--TODAY Show Online
"The Seed Keeper is a deeply empathetic portrayal of a character grappling with a vibrant heritage complicated by pain, loss, and dysfunction." --Sierra Magazine
"[Wilson] expertly weaves history and fiction to show how colonialism has long been a driver of environmental destruction. But the novel is also celebratory, a powerful and compelling ode to the resilience and wisdom of Indigenous cultures." --Literary Hub, "Recommended Climate Readings for March 2021"
" And though this book pulls no punches in its condemnation of white settlers and colonizers and their continued abuse of the land, it is also heartfelt and hopeful, carrying a steadfast belief in the strength of family, will, and growth." --BuzzFeed, "Best Books of Spring 2021"
"The Seed Keeper confronts the legacy of American Indian genocide and sets Diane Wilson apart as a rising star." --Bustle, "Most Anticipated Books of 2021"
"In elegant prose, Wilson tells a story of one woman's reflections on her life, loss, family, and the seeds she knows are her ancestors and an imperative legacy she must protect at all costs." --Ms. Magazine, "Most Anticipated Reads of 2021"
"Wilson offers finely wrought descriptions of the natural world, as the voice of the seeds provides connective threads to the stories of her people." --Publishers Weekly starred review
"[The Seed Keeper] is a simultaneously heartbreaking and hopeful story that weaves the voices of four women on the weft of history and storytelling."--Walker Art Magazine
"A thoughtful, moving meditation on connections to the past and the land that humans abandon at their peril." --Kirkus Reviews
"Haunting and beautiful, the seeds and words of this novel will find their way into your world, however far from the Dakhóta lands that might be." --BookPage
"A thought-provoking and engaging read." --Booklist starred review
"With a focus on women who carry the scars of the past alongside hope for the future, The Seed Keeper is a profound novel about resilience and rebirth." --Foreword Reviews
"Direct and beautiful . . . A compelling read." --High Country News
"Wisdom, humor, truth, marriage, history, child-rearing, environmental advocacy, overcoming obstacles, tears: [The Seed Keeper] has it all, told in a compelling and poignant way."--The Circle: Native American News & Arts
"Diane Wilson's narrative of intergenerational loss and rebirth fills my heart with gratitude."--Winona LaDuke, author of Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming
"A gracefully told story of continuity through seeds saved and nurtured by Dakhóta women. . . a read that feeds heart and spirit in the same way as do the gardens that are their legacy."--Linda LeGarde Grover, author of Onigamiising: Seasons of an Ojibwe Year
"The Seed Keeper is both a prayer and a powerful invitation for all of us to fall back in love with the earth."--Carolyn Holbrook, author of Tell Me Your Names and I Will Testify
Praise for Beloved Child
"Both profoundly radical and deeply moving . . . In Beloved Child, Wilson moves powerfully into wider focus. . . . Wilson has written a heartfelt love story filled with pain and trauma, but also redemption. She writes simply and beautifully, getting close to her subjects by listening intently and with palpable curiosity. . . . Beloved Child is inspirational and deeply empowering."--Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Beloved Child is an exercise in healing and revealing; it is history, biography, psychology, and anthropology, and it succeeds on all fronts. . . . Not just a very good book, it is a necessary book."--First Nations Drum
"I am humbled by the absolute beauty of Beloved Child. I have witnessed sacred places that speak to my soul and instantly bring tears, yet I cannot articulate that truth as Wilson has within these pages. This book gives us tools to listen to our hearts."--Ramona Kitto Stately, Indian Education Program Specialist, Osseo (Minnesota) Area Schools
Praise for Spirit Car
"With graceful, clear-eyed prose, Wilson writes her way home. Spirit Car is a generous honor song, raised in celebration of ancestors history too often forgets."--Susan Power, author of The Grass Dancer and Roofwalker
"This is a moving and poignant tale about the anguish of colonialism and the insidious way it has worked to separate Indigenous Peoples from our roots. Yet within this devastating account also emerges a powerful and uplifting story about returning home."--Waziyatawin Angela Wilson, author of Remember This! Dakota Decolonization and the Eli Taylor Narratives
"Wilson had to convince her relatives to tell these moving stories, and now she is determined that they not be forgotten, for 'we are the sum of those who have come before us.'"--Booklist
"This moving narrative recounts Wilson's attempt to trace her Dakota heritage, sparked by her usually reticent mother's story of having been left for two years at a mission boarding school on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Though her own family stories have been forgotten or repressed, Wilson relies on carefully researched historical accounts and her own imagination to depict how her Native American ancestors survived the Dakota War of 1862. . . . Wilson convincingly asserts that 'our daily lives are only the tip of the mountain that rises above hundreds of years of generations whose experience, acknowledged or not, has everything to do with the people we become.'"--Publishers Weekly
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