A Council of Dolls

A Council of Dolls (2023), by Mona Susan Power, is a work of historical fiction that explores the lives and experiences of three generations of Dakhóta women as they confront forces aimed at erasing their cultural identity. Inspired by stories from Power’s own parents and grandparents’ time at Standing Rock Sioux Reservation and Carlisle Indian Industrial School, this semi-autobiographical tale illuminates historical injustices and their lasting impacts on Indigenous Americans. Through a nonlinear temporal structure and use of symbolism, Power balances portrayals of oppression and trauma with messages about healing and resilience. The novel is narrated in first person through the perspectives of three distinct narrators. 

A Council of Dolls won the Minnesota Book Award and High Plains Book Award and was longlisted for the National Book Award and Carol Shields Prize. Previous books by the author, published under the name Susan Power, include The Grass Dancer (1994), Roofwalker (2002), and Sacred Wilderness (2014).

This guide uses the e-book edition of the text published in 2023 by Mariner Books. Pagination may differ from print editions.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature descriptions of physical abuse, racism, religious discrimination, child death, child abuse, substance use, sexual violence and harassment, child sexual abuse, bullying, addiction, illness, pregnancy loss, death, graphic violence, sexual content, and suicide. In particular, the novel deals with the legacy of the genocide of Indigenous Americans as well as abuse at Indigenous boarding schools.

Language Note: The novel includes the term “Indian” to depict its historical use in reference to Indigenous Americans. This study guide uses the term “Indian” only in quoted material and in proper nouns (e.g., “United States Indian Service”); elsewhere, it refers to Indigenous people or to the Dakhóta and Lakhóta. It also preserves the Dakhóta/Lakhóta spelling used in the novel.

Plot Summary

The novel begins with a young Dakhóta girl named Sissy, who tells the story of her childhood in Chicago during the 1960s. Sissy’s mother, Lillian, is beautiful and charismatic but also volatile and abusive. She’s passionate about advocating for Indigenous communities and fighting racism. Sissy’s father, Cornelius, is gentle and loving but seemingly unaware that he isn’t the only target of his wife’s abuse. Both parents tell Sissy stories from their past and teach her the history of the Dakhóta and Lakhóta people. Sissy also has a doll named Ethel who talks to her and is her constant companion. 

The family visits Sissy’s grandmother, Cora, at her North Dakota home on the reservation. Here, Sissy sees hints of her mother’s past traumas and experiences the reassurance of her grandmother’s love. One Thanksgiving, Sissy falls and smashes the bag of groceries she’s carrying, which sends her mother into a rage. Sissy runs in fear, but her mother chases her, catching up at the top landing of the apartment stairs. Sissy, knowing violence is imminent, shuts her eyes. Then she hears a scuffle and a scream and opens her eyes to find her mother lying dead at the bottom of the stairwell. Sissy isn’t sure how it happened, but Ethel implies she pushed Sissy’s mother to protect Sissy.

The novel then moves to Lillian, who tells the story of her childhood in the 1930s. She’s born and raised in North Dakota, where she teaches herself to read by the age of four. Of Lillian’s four siblings, she’s closest to her older sister Blanche. Both love their mother, Cora, but hate and fear their abusive father, Jack. In one of Jack’s drunken episodes, he becomes delirious and threatens Blanche and Lillian with his shotgun because he thinks they’re government men trying to make him return to Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Afterward, Jack’s shame and guilt lead him to stop drinking. His sobriety allows his daughters to see a gentler side of him, but it doesn’t last long. 

Lillian and Blanche attend a Catholic boarding school in Bismarck, where the nuns are cruel and racist. They befriend two Lakhóta boys, brothers named Luther and Cornelius, both of whom fall in love with Lillian. Over Christmas break, Lillian receives a doll from missionaries and names the doll Mae. The doll is alive, which Lillian takes as a sign of her own magic. She loves Mae but feels compelled to give her to Ada, a little girl dying of consumption (tuberculosis). When Ada dies and her parents bury Mae with her, Lillian thinks she’s lost her doll forever. When Lillian returns to school and is locked in the punishment box (a closet used for solitary confinement), however, Mae’s spirit finds her way to Lillian’s side. Blanche is less fortunate. A sermon condemning the girls’ hero, Sitting Bull, leads Blanche to rebelliously sing in their forbidden native language. As punishment, the nuns pour lye soap in her mouth, and the caustic mixture kills her.

The novel next turns to Cora, Lillian’s mother. She’s born during a blizzard at the turn of the 20th century and encounters tragedy by the time she’s three, when the revered leader Sitting Bull is killed. Cora’s deerskin doll, Winona, has been by her side for as long as Cora can remember and talks to Cora, telling her about witnessing the Whitestone Hill Massacre in 1863. 

Cora’s parents send her to Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania when she’s 12. On the train ride, Cora befriends a boy named Jack, whose mother is Dakhóta but whose father is a white soldier in the US Army. On their first day at Carlisle, school administrators burn the students’ clothes and personal belongings, including Winona, in front of them. Among the ashes, Jack finds a stone that was sewn into the doll as her heart and returns it to Cora. Winona’s spirit and voice live on in the stone, so Cora can still converse with her. When Cora has pneumonia, the spirit of one of her ancestors appears to her in a vision. The spirit was killed in a massacre and is covered in wounds. She keeps the wounds from healing to show Cora the desecration of her body. 

Cora and Jack spend summers with families in the area. Jack runs away the first summer, but he’s found and returned to Carlisle, where he’s punished. Jack runs away from the school after a sacred dream calls him to perform a traditional Dakhóta ceremony, which brings him visions of a future in which he and Cora help restore their world together. When Jack’s sister dies, Jack runs away once more to attend the funeral and accuse his father of murder. He’s arrested and sentenced to one year in prison. Cora, who loves Jack and knows he loves her, writes him letters regularly. When he’s released and returns to Carlisle, Cora realizes his spirit has been broken.

The story then returns to Sissy, who changed her name to Jesse during high school. She’s now a novelist in her fifties, living an isolated life in Minnesota and still haunted by unanswered questions about her mother’s death. A chance encounter with a book about dolls leads Jesse to find Ethel, who was packed in a trunk when Jesse left home for college. Jesse now believes she only imagined that Ethel talked to her, but when she opens the trunk, she hears the doll’s familiar voice. 

Jesse also finds Shirley, the doll she gave her mother to replace Mae, and a replica of Winona that Cora’s mother gave her when she graduated from Carlisle. Both dolls share the consciousness and memories of the dolls they replaced. On a whim, Jesse buys two more dolls from eBay and sets them with the others on the guest bed. One by one, the three original dolls tell Jesse the stories of their lives, offering their perspectives on the experiences they shared with Sissy, Lillian, and Cora. These stories, a visit from a good friend, and the companionship of her pet cockatoo help Jesse begin the process of confronting her trauma and mending her fractured identity. She has epiphanies about healing and the importance of language and ancestors, followed by a cathartic episode under the moonlight in which she feels unburdened and weightless. The spirits of her mother, grandmother, and wounded ancestor appear by her side and then move quietly on. Jesse ends the story by sharing the dolls’ collective wisdom on identity, love, healing, power, and time.