[Poll Book Tally] I Can Make This Promise by Christine Day 3+ stars

[Karin]

The first thing I want to say is that I listened to the audiobook which may have brought my rating down. Everybody in my house found it very annoying because for some reason, and I don't know if this is the narrator's fault or if it's the fault of the producer, but she has very annoying pauses and very odd intonations, etc, not just for a child, but for anyone from Washington State, or, indeed, anyone I have ever heard speak anywhere. But 3 stars is a like and I give out MANY 3 stars, so it's not bad.

I am from BC, so grew up hearing place names so similar to the names of various tribes mentioned in this book, and, in fact, there is a place in BC with a name very much like the name of the main tribe mentioned in this book. This is because there was another Coastal Saalish tribe who has a reserve that is surrounded, at least in part, by my home town, I kid you not, and in BC they are called reserves and not reservations.

So now onto the story. Edie has grown up in the dark about her mother's Saalish heritage (she doesn't even know that it's Saalish) because her mother was adopted as a baby and has told her she would answer her questions when she is older (hold off on judging her mother until you read the book, because this is a very heartfelt decision since this is about all of the babies stolen from tribes across the US for decades until the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act), and Edie's mother was one of those).

As for the story, the blurb says enough, but suffice it to say that Edie becomes even more curious about her past when she finds a box with letters and photos from a woman who has her first name. In the meantime, she is also in the throes of social changes as one of her 2 best friends is changing and what the reader can see that Edie doesn't for some time is that her friend isn't much of a friend anymore. And, yes, there were a couple of times I had tears welling up in this book, but not because of this friend business, although naturally I can empathize having gone through all of those ages myself.

Christine Day is a strong writer and I am sorry that I borrowed this in audiobook. I plan to read other books by her so I can see for sure just how much of this was the audiobook and just how much was the story itself.