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ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSIn January 2009, eighteen-year-old Lucy Smith, a former foster kid who keeps to herself and trusts almost no one, is a server at an old railcar diner in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. When a well-dressed Native attorney named John Jameson sits in her section and explains that he helps foster kids who might be Native find their tribes and families, Lucy, who has felt watched since New Year's Eve, takes him for a hit man. He leaves behind a business card with a handwritten message on the back: "Lucy, come home where you are loved." Lucy decides to vanish, but the next afternoon, just before she can leave town, a bomb tears through the diner, breaking her leg and badly injuring her coworker Nancy. While she heals in a casino hotel suite under the watchful care of Jameson, who goes by Jamie, and Daunis Fontaine, the best friend of the half sister Lucy never knew, Lucy starts working on Jamie's research into the Indian Child Welfare Act. She keeps planning her escape, though, because she believes whoever is behind the bomb wants something from her. Chapters from her past, from her childhood with her strict, devoted dad in Harbor Springs through a string of foster homes, slowly show what she is running from.
Free Battle of the Books questions for Sisters in the Wind
SPOILERSEvery one of these has the same answer, and that is the point. In a real battle the question is read aloud with a dozen other books in play, and students have a few seconds to place it. Here is what a battle might ask about Sisters in the Wind. Use them as a quiz, a trivia round, or BOTB practice.
Where in the book they come from
- Early in the book
In what book does an injured waitress tell a server, "You look just like your mother"?
✓ Answer
Sisters in the Wind by Angeline Boulley
A blast rips through the back of the diner just as Lucy is leaving, throwing her through the doorway and breaking her left leg. Lying beside her, Nancy, who has spent months saying Lucy reminds her of someone, finally places the resemblance.
- First half
In what book does a girl agree to a matching homemade tattoo only if her dad's watch can cover it?
✓ Answer
Sisters in the Wind by Angeline Boulley
When Lucy turns down Devery's plan to escape Beaver Island together, she lets Devery give them matching tattoos to console her. The letters C and D are smushed together into what looks like a sideways oval with a line down the middle.
- First half
In what book does an attorney compare non-Native families to peas and Native families to onions?
✓ Answer
Sisters in the Wind by Angeline Boulley
Jamie passes along what a Native social worker told him, that outsiders see families as peas in a pod that scatter when the pod opens. Native families are like onions, with layer after layer of family and community protecting the sweet green center, which is the child.
- Second half
In what book does a would-be cowboy bring butterfly weed in a jelly jar before a first kiss?
✓ Answer
Sisters in the Wind by Angeline Boulley
On her sixteenth birthday, Boyd shows up at the porch library with orange butterfly weed he had permission to pick. Lucy thinks each bloom looks like a tiny campfire, and moments later he gives her a tender first kiss.
- Second half
In what book does a headstone carry a middle name shared with the patron saint of alcoholics?
✓ Answer
Sisters in the Wind by Angeline Boulley
At her dad's grave in Harbor Springs, Lucy explains that he changed his middle name from Hamilton to Matthias, the patron saint of alcoholics and those striving for self-control. Later at the library, she discovers a clue about why he may have dropped his mother's maiden name.
- Near the end
In what book does a man recovering from surgery hand over a gift inscribed "Take to the breeze"?
✓ Answer
Sisters in the Wind by Angeline Boulley
Daunis tracks down Misho Abe in a Petoskey hospital, where he greets Lucy as grandchild. He hands her a copy of Charlotte's Web that her dad left with him for her fourteenth birthday, explaining that her dad left gifts for her and made him promise to give them not all at once.
