Novelist wonders what it means to be Native in ‘soulful’ family drama
“Fire Exit” By Morgan Talty Tin House
Morgan Talty’s debut collection, “Night of the Living Rez,” thrilled critics and readers with its steely portrayals of Indigenous lives in and around Maine’s Penobscot reservation, blending gritty realism with gleams of hope and winning the National Book Critics Circle’s coveted Leonard Prize. His novel, “Fire Exit,” reveals a dexterity with the longer form and unflagging affection for his characters.
The late-middle-aged narrator, Charles Lamosway, resides in a bungalow across a river from the reservation. Most mornings he drinks coffee outside and watches his daughter, Elizabeth, as she leaves for work on the opposite shore. Elizabeth has been raised in Native traditions, under the care of her mother Mary, and Mary’s husband, Roger, whom Elizabeth believes to be her biological father. After years of struggling with proximity to his only child, Charles has vowed to disclose his identity, tipping the plot into motion. Talty toggles gracefully between time streams: from 2017 to his protagonist’s adolescence in the 1970s to 1991, when Elizabeth’s birth and the death of Charles’ beloved stepfather, Fredrick, eerily coincided.
Charles befriends Bobby, a charming slacker he meets in AA. They dream up getaways but Charles is tethered to his ailing mother, Louise, whose history of clinical depression and (later) dementia form the book’s heart-piercing throughline. Much of the action in “Fire Exit” revolves around Louise’s ECT appointments, where Charles encounters Mary and the adult Elizabeth, who is also seeking neurological treatment. (TNS)