When the Indian agent comes for Irene and her brothers, their parents reluctantly give them up to be taken to one of Canada’s infamous residential schools. At the school, Irene is separated from her brothers, scrubbed, shorn, and assigned a number: 759. When she and another girl exchange words in Ojibwa, a nun punishes Irene for speaking “the devil’s language.” The punishment is horrifying: she is made to hold a bedpan filled with hot coals. The year passes slowly, chapel preferable to chores and lessons, especially as she can see her brothers there. At home the next summer, Irene tells her father, the community’s chief, about the “lessons” taught at “that horrible place”—and when the Indian agent comes again in the fall, the children hide while he tells the agent, “You will NEVER. TAKE MY CHILDREN. AWAY. AGAIN!”