Baraboo Reads Presents: The Seedkeeper

Join us for a presentation by Jessika Greendeer, seedkeeper, and a lively community discussion of the book. Books are available for free, available at the library beginning on January 2. Please register for the event at the time of book pickup. 

Doors open at 9:30 AM, for a seedball making workshop. 

About Jessika: Jessika is a Ho-Chunk Nation tribal member from Baraboo, WI and a member of the Deer Clan. Her lifework is growing and protecting our seed relatives and regenerating the soils of our Earth. This lifework has taken shape in many places and communities, including with Dream of Wild Health, as the Agricultural Division Manager for her nation, and as a garden mentor within her Nation’s organic community gardens. Jessika is a U.S. Army combat veteran and completed a Veteran-to-Farmer training program at the Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania. She recently served in the legislative branch of the Ho-Chunk Nation.

About The Seedkeeper: 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.

Rosalie Iron Wing has grown up in the woods with her father, Ray, a former science teacher who tells her stories of plants, of the stars, of the origins of the Dakota people. Until, one morning, Ray doesn’t return from checking his traps. Told she has no family, Rosalie is sent to live with a foster family in nearby Mankato—where the reserved, bookish teenager meets rebellious Gaby Makespeace, in a friendship that transcends the damaged legacies they’ve inherited.

On a winter’s day many years later, Rosalie returns to her childhood home. A widow and mother, she has spent the previous two decades on her white husband’s farm, finding solace in her garden even as the farm is threatened first by drought and then by a predatory chemical company. Now, grieving, Rosalie 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.

This event is sponsored by: The Carnegie-Schadde Memorial Public Library, Baraboo Acts Coalition, Baraboo Area Literacy Council, The Village Booksmith, Sauk County Master Gardeners Association, The Ho-Chunk Nation, and Four Elements.