The Birchbark House

Omakayas,a seven-year-old Native American girl of the Ojibwa tribelives through the joys of summer and the perils of winter on an island in Lake Superior in 1847. For as long as Omakayas can remembershe and her family have lived on the land her people call the Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker. Although the chimookomanwhite peopleencroach more and more on their landlife continues much as it always has. Every summer the family builds a new birchbark house; every fall they go to ricing camp to harvest and feast; they move to the cedar log house before the first snows arriveand celebrate the end of the longcold winters at maple-sugaring camp. In betweenOmakayas fights with her annoying little brotherPinchplays with the adorable babyNeewoand tries to be grown-up like her beautiful older sisterAngeline. But the satisfying rhythms of their lives are shattered when a visitor comes to their lodge one winter nightbringing with him an invisible enemy that will change things forever. Set on an island in Lake Superior in 1847and filled with fascinating details of traditional Ojibwa lifeThe Birchbark House is a breathtaking novel by one of America’s most gifted and original writers.