The Marrow Thieves

Miig rescues Frenchie after the Recruiters take Frenchie’s brother, Mitch. Miig went on the run after losing his husband, Isaac, to the Recruiters years before. Over time, Miig forms a surrogate family group of other Indigenous that he meets as he heads north to try to escape the schools. Miig has more engagement with his cultural heritage than the younger generation, but does not have the same access to the language as Minerva does or Isaac did. Instead, Miig teaches his group how to hunt and survive, and shares the stories he remembers both from their shared heritage and of how the world ended up the way it is. 

Miig serves as a replacement father figure for Frenchie. Frenchie looks up to Miig, but also questions his authority as the novel continues. On some occasions, Miig quiets Frenchie’s antagonism by sharing more truth with him than he does the others in the group. Eventually, Miig takes a step back in leading the group to let Frenchie take more of a leadership role. By the end of the novel, Miig has grown into “a tired old man and a cooperative soldier all wrapped up in one Indian” (177). In the final moments of the novel, Miig reunites with Isaac, providing a crystallizing moment for Frenchie to finally understand what his people can accomplish together.

Minerva is the oldest member of Frenchie’s group, a true Elder. Frenchie describes her as “dark, round, and tiny like a tree stump. She kept her long grey hair in two braids like a little girl with a flowered kerchief tied over her head and under her round chin […] She didn’t talk, and when she did it was in bursts accompanied by laughter and maybe a scream or two” (120). Other characters frequently find Minerva “strange,” as she sings to herself, watches people intently, and collects odd things. As the oldest, Minerva remembers the most of how life would have been before the climate apocalypse and the rise of the new schools. Her odd behavior likely stems from a combination of the trauma of loss and a desire to cling to the old ways and pass them on to younger generations. 

Minerva sacrifices herself to the Recruiters to protect Frenchie and the others. Her deep connection to Indigenous culture proves to be a superpower, and she uses her dreams to blow up the school where she is being “processed.”

As the second oldest female member of Miig’s group, Wab takes responsibility for much of the running of the group. She is a runner, a hunter, a cook, and often delegates tasks to others. Frenchie first describes her as “movie star beautiful, all tall and harsh […] she just faced the world with one eye, a long red slash from her right cheekbone to the middle of her forehead over the other” (77). Wab stays silent much of the time and does not talk about her past, which leads many of the group members to trade rumors about her and how she lost her eye.  

While the group stays at Four Winds, Wab gets drunk and reveals her coming-to story. Her mother was an addict, so Wab needed to fend for herself. She becomes a runner in exchange for food. Eventually, another Native sells her out to an evil group that wants to exploit people in exchange for communication. The evil men slash her face, then keep her prisoner and rape her repeatedly for two days. Wab’s revelation of her past shatters RiRi’s innocence and teaches Frenchie’s group that there are traitors among their people—something Frenchie never thought could be true. Eventually Wab and Chi-Boy settle down in the Council’s camp, and by the end of the story, Wab is pregnant.

Rose has a “big, throaty laugh” and “round dark cheeks and loose curls” (32). Frenchie is smitten with Rose from the moment she arrives. She is half Indigenous. From the beginning of her time with Miig’s group, she is “the dissenting voice to the way things are, the rebel waiting for the fight to be brought” (32). Rose’s influence likely prompts Frenchie into becoming more like her—more of a fighter. 

Frenchie and Rose share a few intimate moments throughout the story, though other people almost always interrupt those moments. When Frenchie’s group links up with the Council’s group, Frenchie and Rose begin fighting as Frenchie behaves oddly toward her due to his inability to process his own feelings. His hostility toward her increases as she interacts with Derrick, whom Frenchie envies. Toward the end of the story, Rose decides to go back on the run; Frenchie opts to join her rather than stay with his father. While their decision remains ambiguous, Dimaline suggests that Frenchie and Rose will ultimately stay together with the camp rather than go back into the woods.

RiRi is the youngest member of Frenchie’s group. She comes “from a Metis community close to where [Frenchie’s] father had said ours used to be” (21). She is sweet, naïve, and looks up to Frenchie as a surrogate older brother, asking him to share stories with her and looking or his approval. Despite overhearing Wab’s terrible coming-to story, RiRi maintains a lot of her innocence: She believes a pair of rubber boots she finds must be candy because they’re shiny, and she optimistically hopes that there will be other children with the strange men that Frenchie’s group comes across. Her death at the hands of one of those men—Lincoln—is heartbreaking for the group because of her youth and innocence. Losing RiRi changes Frenchie irrevocably, as her death spurs him to kill a man for the first time.

Frenchie’s father Jean is a member of the Council who disappears early in the post-apocalyptic world. By the time the story starts, he has already been missing for a while. Frenchie stumbles upon him again toward the end of the story, where “[h]is hair was longer and his face sagged a bit more at his hard jaw, and then there was the missing lower half of his leg” (169). Jean has scars that indicate prior torture. Frenchie’s feelings about his father are complicated: Frenchie is relieved to find his father but also resents him for abandoning Frenchie, Mitch, and Frenchie’s mother.

One of the youngest members of the group, Slopper is “the nine-year-old with the belly of a fifty-year-old diabetic” (21). He is always hungry and rarely understands what’s going on in the complex situations that befall the group. He came to Miig’s group with his father, who eventually “went crazy one night, running straight into a Recruiter camp before we could stop him” (98). Slopper’s traumatic response to hearing Story at a young age is why Miig excludes the youngest group members from hearing Story until they are older.

Miig rescued Tree and Zheegwon, the 12-year-old twins in Frenchie’s group. They have green eyes, “wide shoulders and heavy hands” (21). When they were seven years old, white townspeople tortured them, and the twins are now covered in scars. The twins share a baseball cap and “chang[e] it from head to head, one day to the next” (21).

Chi-Boy is the oldest boy in the group at 17 years old. Frenchie describes him as “quiet almost to the point of being mute and as skinny as a doe” (20). He is the group’s scout and is in a romantic relationship with Wab. He, unlike Frenchie, never questions Miig’s instructions.

Travis and Lincoln are two traitorous Natives that Frenchie’s group comes across in the woods. Wab recognizes Travis as the man who sold her out to the Recruiters years ago. Lincoln kills RiRi and himself while on drugs; in response, Frenchie shoots and kills Travis.