As the protagonist of the novel, French is a 17-year-old Métis boy whom circumstances often force into making difficult and morally ambiguous choices. Like most other young people in the novel, French has grown up separated from his biological family. French is part of the found family of an elder named Miigwans and is in love with Rose Morriseau. French is tough and resourceful and, in The Marrow Thieves, he helped to find Isaac, Miigwans’s missing husband. As Hunting by Stars opens, French finds himself imprisoned in a dark, solitary cell in a residential school. Slated for marrow extraction, French must find a way to survive and escape. Fortuitously, he meets his long-lost biological brother, Mitch, at the school. However, Mitch is now working for the government, and when he suggests that French join him to save himself, French pretends to go along with this idea.

During the training program to join the government, French is often tortured, starved, and manipulated. He is also addressed with dehumanizing epithets and taunted as “half-blooded” (339) because of his Métis ancestry. As French struggles to overcome these and other obstacles, the drive for survival forces French into many uncomfortable decisions, such as pretending to join the Recruiters who are hunting Indigeous.