Sundogs and Sinners

Sundogs and Sinners is a tale of love and hate, nurture and neglect, traditions and taboos that shines cold light upon the dangers of chasing what cannot be caught. Jasmine is the daughter of opposite worlds: Angela, her mother, the white privileged debutant from the upper echelons of Fargo's wealthiest and politically empowered and Jasmine's biological father, Dave, the eighth of nine children of a Minneapolis single Ojibwe mother. Driven by the death of her elder teenage brother and her resentment at having always resided in his shadow, Angela looks for her missing emotional pieces in Dave's "otherness" which results in a torrid, tumultuous, but temporary, bond and the unplanned birth of their child. A decade later, Jasmine lives in the affluent Fargo fold of Angela's and Angela's husband, Lars' socially prominent families. Though Jasmine seems to have everything, she now is the one in search of missing pieces. Angela never speaks of Dave; Dave hasn't had contact with their daughter since she was two-years old, and Jasmine wants to know why. The larger looming question is what, if any, part does Dave being Ojibwe play in Jasmine's identity. When Rosella, an Ojibwe girl adopted at infancy by non-Native parents, moves to town, she and Jasmine become fast middle school friends. Together, they face off with mean girls armed with racial slurs, confront the complexity of first crushes, and, inevitably, explore Jasmine's ever-growing need to know the truth about her mother, her legally adoptive father, and, most of all, Dave. As Jasmine pushes the search forward, Angela pulls back from her daughter and husband as the trauma and twisted urges of her youth re-awaken, and Angela pursues the elusive missing pieces she has yet to find. As mother and daughter unwittingly move closer to the same destination, secrets, lies, and raw realities threaten to destroy everyone involved. While some pieces are discovered, others will be lost forever, and Jasmine will be left to build who she truly is out of the ones that remain.