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.
A 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Big Reads Selection
Winner of the 2022 Minnesota Book Award for Fiction.
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2021 by Literary Hub, Bustle, Thrillist, Observer, Ms. Magazine, Alma, The Millions, the Star Tribune, and Books Are Magic, with starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and BookPage.
THE SEEDKEEPER
Milkweed Editions, 2021
$16, paperback, 372 pages
Milkweed Editions, Birchbark Books, Bookshop, IndieBound, Amazon
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 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.
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
2006
SPIRIT CAR: JOURNEY TO A DAKOTA PAST
Borealis Books, 2006
$17.95, paperback, 224 pages
MHSPress, Amazon, Birchbark Books
Growing up in the 1950s in suburban Minneapolis, Diane Wilson had a family like everybody else. Her Swedish American father was a salesman at Sears and her mother drove her brothers to baseball practice and went to parent-teacher conferences. But in her thirties, Diane began to wonder why her mother didn't speak of her past. So she traveled to South Dakota and Nebraska, searching out records of her relatives through six generations, hungering to know their stories. She began to write a haunting account of the lives of her Dakota Indian family, based on research, to recreate their oral history that was lost, or repressed, or simply set aside as gritty issues of survival demanded attention. Spirit Car is an exquisite counterpoint of memoir and carefully researched fiction, a remarkable narrative that ties modern Minnesotans to the trauma of the Dakota War. Wilson found her family's love and humor—and she discovered just how deeply our identities are shaped by the forces of history.
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. "We find ways to transcend the trauma so that we no longer identify as victims," writes Wilson. "We become free to work toward justice for our communities." "Beloved Child" is inspirational and deeply empowering.
—Chuck Leddy
Star Tribune,
September 1, 2011
BELOVED CHILD:
A DAKOTA WAY OF LIFE
Borealis Books, 2011
$17.95, paperback, 224 pages
MHSPress, Amazon, Birchbark Books
Among the Dakota, the Beloved Child ceremony marked the special, tender affection that parents felt toward a child whose life had been threatened. This book explores the work of several modern Dakota people who are continuing to raise beloved children: Gabrielle Tateyuskanskan, an artist and poet; Clifford Canku, a spiritual leader and language teacher; Alameda Rocha, a boarding school survivor; Harley and Sue Eagle, Canadian activists; and Delores Brunelle, an Ojibwe counselor. Each of these humble but powerful people teaches children to believe in the “genius and brilliance” of Dakota culture as a way of surviving historical trauma. —MHSP
A GOOD TIME FOR THE TRUTH: RACE IN MINNESOTA
Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2016
$18.95, paperback, 224 pages
MHSPress, Amazon, Birchbark Books
Minnesota communities struggle with some of the nation’s worst racial disparities. In this anthology, sixteen of Minnesota’s best writers provide a range of perspectives on what it is like to live as a person of color in Minnesota.