Lauren Haddad | The PEN Ten
Lauren Haddad’s debut novel, Fireweed (Astra House, 2025), takes an intimate look at the issue of racism toward Indigenous communities. The story follows Jenny, a white woman who investigates the sudden disappearance of her neighbor, an Indigenous woman named Rachelle. From apathetic family and friends to cops who could care less, Jenny’s search becomes increasingly desperate as she comes to understand the negative biases towards Indigenous women, which are as pervasive and ubiquitous as fireweed.
In conversation with PEN America’s Membership Engagement Manager, Aleah Gatto, for this week’s PEN Ten, Haddad discusses her love of detective stories, how her experiences in Prince George, Canada, influenced the story, and her growth as an author writing outside of her identity (Bookshop, Barnes and Noble).
The events of Fireweed take place in and around the isolated city of Prince George in Canada. Your author’s biography says that Fireweed “was born out of years of relationship to that place, owing itself to the people there.” Can you talk more about your experience living in Prince George, and how its atmosphere contributed to the novel’s inception?
I lived in Vancouver in 2013 and began drafting Fireweed years later, before ever having visited Prince George (PG). The first major media attention the disappearances on Highway 16 received was in 2000 when a white college student went missing just outside of PG and Fireweed is set in motion by a similar disappearance. PG is known as the capital of the North and I thought it would make a great foil to Vancouver.
The more I learned about the city the more I felt drawn to it: a cross between my industrial hometown of Detroit and the vast wilds of my heart’s home, Leelanau County, Michigan. I visited PG pretty early in my drafting and fell in love with its contradictions. Home to the most pulp and paper mills in North America, it’s one of Canada’s most polluted (and violent) cities, and also one of its most strikingly beautiful—and most resilient. There are smokestacks and mutant fish and millworkers missing a limb. The violence of the extraction industries is palpable: you can taste its dank in the air. There is also Angelique Merasty’s Native Arts Center and eagles overhead and the most majestic black spruce in front of Randy Dakota’s trailer, which Randy refers to as his “medicine tree.” In summer the roads are lined with the exuberant pink of the fireweed.
I was lucky enough to be able to return to PG over the years it took to complete the novel, and the place—and especially the relationships I formed there—truly did breathe life into Fireweed.
In one sense, the plot of Fireweed is straightforward: Jenny, a white woman, takes it upon herself to investigate the disappearance of Rachelle, an Indigenous woman. But as Jenny’s naïveté about the modern-day plights of Indigenous women unfold, the readers begin to doubt Jenny’s approach to her solo investigation, wondering what her true—if subconscious—intentions are. As you wrote the novel, did the plot go as you expected? Did it diverge and surprise you?
I always knew that the subversive element of Fireweed, where Jenny’s search is revealed to be one clouded with self-preoccupation, would be the driving force behind the plot. I wanted to explore both the voyeurism we find in the true crime genre as well as the more subterranean motivations we can harbor when involving ourselves in a cause.
I also knew, from the onset, that I wanted Jenny’s story to end in the same place it began: pinning washing on the line in her backyard, the shape of the story echoing the way she describes the forestry industry—“a circle, a loop, with no beginning and no end.” A refusal, of sorts, of the type of redemption that can be anticipated when picking up a social novel, the protagonist’s arc wielded together instead. But I didn’t know how I’d get there, exactly, so there were some surprises along the way.
Fireweed’s namesake, a plant so ubiquitous and pervasive as to be overlooked, is an apt symbol for one of the novel’s main themes: violence against women, especially violence against Indigenous women that is enabled by the inherent racism embedded in the foundations of our society. How did you come to understand this theme and depict it on such an intimate level?
If you look at the history of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and their refusal to take seriously the pleas of the Indigenous community to investigate the disappearances of their women and girls, you understand that society values those women less. Emmanuelle Walter’s investigative book Stolen Sisters: The Story of Two Missing Girls, Their Families and How Canada has Failed Indigenous Women was an introduction to this truth. My understanding deepened when I memoirs written by Indigenous women, in particular Angelique Merasty’s memoir, God Opens Doors, a chronicle of her life as an Indigenous woman born in mid-century Canada.
When I started forming connections in PG my perception was shaped by the stories women shared with me. One friend lost a sister on the Highway. She shared that her community often talked about the connection between violence against their traditional territories and violence against women’s bodies.
Men in the extraction industry are paid to enact violence against the earth, signing contracts that give valuation (in the form of monetary compensation) to their body parts. Some of these men track this violence everywhere, the female body seen as an outlet for their angst. This violence stems from a serious disconnection in worldview and while no one, in this worldview, truly wins, it is the women, and especially the Indigenous women, who pay with their lives.
I wanted to explore both the voyeurism we find in the true crime genre as well as the more subterranean motivations we can harbor when involving ourselves in a cause.
Reading Fireweed is like reading a subverted detective story, where Jenny seems to be getting nowhere in her increasingly desperate search for Rachelle. How have detective stories influenced you?
The comparative title I used when querying Fireweed was Twin Peaks and this series, as well as Lynch’s neo-noir Blue Velvet, had a huge impact on the story, as well as on me as a storyteller. Both stories employ the trope of the amateur detective. Jeffrey Beaumont in Blue Velvet, whose motives for his investigation are far from pure and Audrey Horne in Twin Peaks whose undercover investigation ends when her identity is revealed and she finds herself held hostage.
The idea of the amateur detective is appealing to me because it’s so fantastical. I read a lot from Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series when researching Fireweed and the only way Plum ever gets her man is by sheer dint of luck or major intervention (or both). I think it’s such a wildly popular trope because it speaks to the desire to break through the monotony of everyday life and discover something unexpected. It also speaks to the very human desire to want to help. But how much of that desire is actually focused on the victim and how much of it is clouded by wanting to be perceived as helpful? Solving the case is an important aspect of these stories, but the stories, ultimately, center the detective. I leaned into this tendency.
Early on in the story, you write, “Indigenous. A five-dollar word if there ever was one…You could forget, sometimes, the meaning of that word. Native. They were here first—like the cow parsnip, the fireweed.” What do you think the use of these terms mean in shaping our understanding of one another?
On one level, Fireweed is satirizing the trope we can find in social novels of yore, of a white protagonist’s “racism journey”, Jenny’s realizations juvenile, inane, to the modern reader. On another level, Jenny’s perspective was prevalent in 2001, at the time the book is set, part of the reason why so many of the Highway’s victims’ stories were buried for decades. Education around these terms looked quite different then, with Canadian history focused more on the settlers’ perspective. Residential schools were operating until the late 1990s. There was a separate hospital in PG for the Indigenous population then, as well.
Of course, the education around these terms looks a lot different now. And while an understanding of these terms is important, that’s not the whole story. Jenny’s shift is not enough to create any real impact on her environment; the privileges she’s afforded allow her to close her eyes at the end. I love being able to hold two truths at once and, while I do think that personal development is important, there are so many greater forces at play to uphold the status quo. I also wonder whether the discourse around social injustice (and its focus on these terms in particular) can, inadvertently, be more geared toward white racial redemption and less focused on enacting real structural change.
What was it like to write characters whose identities and lived experiences are vastly different from your own? What considerations did you take? What did you learn?
I am, as Zadie Smith said, “fascinated to presume”; as a writer of fiction, I like being able to slip into someone else’s shoes. That said, Fireweed is set in a real place and it touches on the violent and ongoing history of the Highway of Tears. One major consideration I took was to refuse to churn the living tragedy of the Highway into entertainment, which is why the story takes its unusual shape.
In order to explore Fireweed’s themes, I needed to write from the perspective of someone like Jenny, whose experience is wildly different from my own. She’s a product of a racist and a segregated society, a host of voices (her mother, her grandmother, her friends) often migrating through her head. Her world is pretty closed off, and inhabiting her voice could be painful, a survey into some of our ugliest parts. In order to make her believable I had to tap into what we share, like the deep sense of loneliness I’ve felt since I was a child. An Arab-American who was born in metro-Detroit, I grew up feeling like an outsider. Arabs are a large minority in my hometown, but, with skin much lighter than my father’s, I could pass for white. I could see, in some ways, from both sides of the fence. These experiences certainly helped inform my approach to the story.
Interactions are filtered through Jenny’s foggy lens. Rachelle, an Indigenous character, is intentionally screened off—mythologized, the way the other can often be, by Jenny. My research in PG—mainly, the relationships I formed there—helped inform Jenny’s voice, as well as provide the clues to the place. Many of the anecdotes found in Fireweed are versions of stories that were shared with me: the millworker who got pushed out of his job following an injury, the man who spent the night outside of his camper and was carted off by a bear, the fisherman who cooks up the contaminated fish, the friend’s husband with a shady occupation.
I can’t speak to accuracy, as even memoir is subjective, but I did try to depict the place and time with specificity. Nicole Fox, a First Nations woman who was born and raised in PG, was one of Fireweed’s first readers.
I love being able to hold two truths at once and, while I do think that personal development is important, there are so many greater forces at play to uphold the status quo.
You use Rachelle and Jenny’s near-identical houses as a catalyst for making comparisons between the two women. What was your purpose for drawing parallels and identifying differences?
Rachelle and Jenny have more in common than not, even living in a mirror image of one another. Where there could be solidarity, there is division. Jenny’s prejudices are what keep her alone. These prejudices serve to give Jenny a false sense of superiority, preventing her from rebelling against a system that also neglects her best interests, albeit to a lesser extent than Rachelle’s.
The allotment of power, however meager, is what can keep us from banding together against oppression, even when we’re in, essentially, the same rudderless boat.
Mirrors are an important motif in the novel. Women are often pitted against one another, and can use each other as a way of seeing their own victories and failures. From the outside, Rachelle has everything Jenny wants. This measuring stick is another way of alienating women from one another; instead of seeing the person in front of you, all you’re met with is your own reflection.
What is a moment of frustration that you encountered when writing the story, and how did you overcome it?
I’m self-taught and was learning craft as I went. I used my favorite novels in lieu of a writing group or mentor to try and understand the technical aspects, but I’m not sure I would recommend that path! As I kept drafting I was able to share the work with other writers and this opened things up in a way that seems so obvious in retrospect. Sara Davis, author of the wonderful novel The Scapegoat, was especially generous in those early stages. Community really is everything!
Before Rachelle’s disappearance, Jenny’s main concern stems from her inability to get pregnant. What do you have to say about women being ostracized by their communities when their lives diverge from what is traditionally accepted?
I love this question. Traditionally accepted is such an interesting phrase because it is so amorphous. The expectations for women in a rural place like PG are different than those in a city like Vancouver, but I’m not sure one set of expectations is more liberating.
Jenny’s friends Missy and Anne-Marie are “so fertile [it’s] offensive” but their lives aren’t any easier than Jenny’s. In a society where life isn’t valued, motherhood isn’t either. Missy and Anne-Marie (and Rachelle, for that matter, though the barriers she is up against are more numerous) all live in relative isolation, without the supportive mesh human beings lived within for centuries.
Still, I can’t help but think, when I think of what it means for a woman’s life to diverge, of some of my favorite figures: Jeanne d’Arc, Baba Yaga, herbalist Juliette de Bairacli Levy. One has to diverge to forge a new path.
I would say Fireweed is a book about whiteness and the way our concern can be worn as a mask, and shed just as easily. It’s a challenging, prickly, slippery book. Sometimes I liken it to a mirror—usually the social novel offers up a flattering reflection of its reader and Fireweed does the opposite, calling into question our motivations when identifying with a cause.
Overall, where would you say your book fits into the narrative about the relationship between white people and Indigenous people, and the rights of Indigenous people in Canada (and the U.S.)?
The book is set in 2001 but the issues depicted are ongoing. When I first stayed in PG in 2017 I observed a lot of the dynamics that are captured in the novel. Even though white and Indigenous people are living side-by-side, parts of PG could feel highly segregated. Hearing slurs and stereotypes was common, even as recently as in 2019 during my last stay there. The book reveals a history we may not want to look at, illuminating how much has changed—and hasn’t.
Fireweed isn’t intended to speak on behalf of the Indigenous community. While the Highway of Tears is a factor in the story, Fireweed doesn’t offer a thorough examination of its violent history or current conditions. The Sixties Scoop and the residential schools are touched upon, but there isn’t a “teaching moment.” The reader is prompted to research further than the confines of a novel.
I would say Fireweed is a book about whiteness and the way our concern can be worn as a mask, and shed just as easily. It’s a challenging, prickly, slippery book. Sometimes I liken it to a mirror—usually the social novel offers up a flattering reflection of its reader and Fireweed does the opposite, calling into question our motivations when identifying with a cause. How much is our concern for others clouded with self-preoccupation? When we pick up a “thriller” based on lived violence and oppression, what is it we’re hoping to take away? At the same time, it isn’t moralizing. This urge to implicate oneself in a “mission” feels very human to me, and I hope I depicted this with nuance.
Lauren Haddad is an Iraqi-American from metro-Detroit who currently lives and works as an herbalist in a small village in Switzerland. Pursuing the question of why she would be drawn to a place of tragedy, Haddad followed the pull to Prince George’s paradoxical wilderness and industry, expanding still-ongoing conversations with the indigenous community there into a grant-sponsored photo-journalism project, “Medicine Tree”, which in collaboration with photographer Lucas Olivet received an honorable mention for Duke University’s Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize. Haddad studied holistic nutrition in Vancouver, herbalism in Williams, Oregon and is a graduate with honors of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her essay on Prince George will be featured in the forthcoming Skinnerboox publication Medicine Tree.
