The Seed Keeper

Diane Wilson (Dakota) is a writer, speaker and educator who has published two award-winning books as well as essays in numerous publications. Her new novel, “The Seed Keeper,” was published by Milkweed Editions in 2021. A haunting novel spanning several generations, The Seed Keeper follows a Dakota family’s struggle to preserve their way of life and their sacrifices to protect what matters most. Please join us for a reading and conversation. Check back soon for online registration details.

Rosalie Iron Wing has grown up in the woods with her father, Ray, until, one morning, he doesn’t return. Told she has no family, Rosalie is sent to live with a foster family in nearby Mankato ― where she meets rebellious Gaby Makespeace, in a friendship that transcends the damaged legacies they’ve inherited. Years later, Rosalie returns to her childhood home and 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 strong 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.

Diane Wilson (Dakota) is the author, previously, of Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past; Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life; and of the middle-grade biography Ella Cara Deloria: Dakota Language Protector. Wilson is the former Executive Director for Dream of Wild Health, an Indigenous non-profit farm, and the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance, a national coalition of tribes and organizations working to create sovereign food systems for Native people.

This event is co-presented by Labyrinth Books & the Princeton Public Library and Land, Language and Art, a Global Initiative from the Princeton University Humanities Council. It is co-sponsored by the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative at Princeton and the Effron Center for the Study of America.