Big thanks to Net Galley and the publisher for the early copy of this book. This narrative is as dark as it is authentic, intense, and deeply human. The writing is immediately engaging and relatable, creating a sense of urgency that makes the book nearly impossible to put down. The characters are intricately crafted—complex yet intimately familiar—making me connect and empathize with their struggles and sacrifices. The story navigates through the intricate dynamics of identity, family ties, and mental health with raw honesty. It challenged me to consider the difficulty of finding the right path when all feel wrong. The vivid descriptions of Maine were fully immersive, I could feel the snow in my boots. It’s thought-provoking, beautiful storytelling, that handles some of the darker aspects of life with care. I recommend this book to anyone looking for a meaningful, engaging story.

From the porch of his home, Charles Lamosway has watched the life he might have had unfold across the river on Maine’s Penobscot Reservation. Charles spent his younger years on the reservation living with his mother Louise and step-father Fredrick but, in accordance with the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act, when he turned 18 Charles no longer had any right to live on the reservation. His step-father had purchased land across the river and he and Charles built a house which Fredrick signed over to Charles. When his step-father died his mother (a non-native) chose to move off the reservation.

The story is told by Charles, an alcoholic who's been sober for 22 years, and through him we meet some great characters and some not-so-great but interesting all the same. It's a story of life, family and relationships. Highly recommended.

Many thanks to Penguin Random House Canada for providing access to the electronic version of this book via Netgalley. All opinions expressed are my own.
Publication Date: June 4, 2024

As the writer of the collection of short stories “Night of the Living Rez” it makes sense that this is the debut novel we receive from Talty: an assortment of stories. The importance of understanding where you come from is a universal notion that, arguably, everyone can appreciate. However, the layered and complex identities of those living both on and off reserve absolutely requires an even deeper grasp of ancestors, histories, traditions and language. As a reader, if this is something new to you, Talty executes this message effortlessly. Whether it’s through Charles never truly feeling a part of the world his daughter inhabits, or the deep sense of duty he feels to tell his daughter where she truly comes from.

I have to admit that this book is a much slower burn than I anticipated with most of the expected “action” unfolding at around the 85% mark. However, the more I sat with the novel after I finished it, the more I realized that I actually appreciated this because it mirrors reality so well. Important events don’t happen in a vacuum. As readers, we often jump into the story right while events are unfolding or right after they have just transpired. This is exciting because we’re getting right to the good stuff. But, there’s something to be said about the privilege of listening to the, sometimes mundane, steps taken to get to the climax.

As a narrator our protagonist Charles isn’t exactly the strongest or most engaging but that’s not really the point. He’s your cousin, your uncle, your brother, your dad who doesn’t really know how to talk to you, but tries hard nevertheless. He’s an endearing character and the subtleties included in his characterization make Charles that much more “real”. I especially felt this way about his consistent confessions of “I think that was their name” when referring to several other characters.

I selfishly wanted more from the ending purely out of curiosity surrounding how these characters carry on because the action was so delayed. Even so, I did feel that the ending was fitting and really beautiful.

Thank you to @netgalley @penguinrandomca and @knopfca for making this eARC available.

4⭐️
Pub date: Today!

I requested this book initially because I love reading all things Indigenous. There was not as much as I had anticipated, but what was there I enjoyed.

This is the first book I've read by Morgan Talty. I loved the writing stye. The main character was a little obsessive and reminded me a lot of the main character in "Is Mother Dead." The main character and primary POV, Charles, lives across the river from an Indigenous community. He has a daughter, but he's not allowed to see her and get to know her. Not a lot happens this book, but at the same time, on an emotional level, a lot happens. The author did a great job exploring different family types, culture, etc.

Charles, the main character, is stuck in his life. Having grown up on the reservation in Maine, he now lives across the river where he can see people he loves from his home but has no access to them. Charles is not a native by blood but was deeply loved by his native stepfather. After the death of his stepfather, Charles is left to care for his ailing mother and builds a friendship with a local white guy, but he's never far from his ties to his former community. This is a story of loyalty and love, guilt and pain.

Charles has a sweet voice and a simple way of speaking that belies his deep thoughts and anguish. The characters stuck with me long after I'd finished reading.

Most anticipated read of the year and wow did it STILL blow me away. I just adore Morgan Talty’s writing style. It’s quiet, to the point, but emotionally devastating. There were several moments where I was tearing through this book and I actively tried to make myself slow down and savour it. I reread my favourite passages several times and read them out loud to my husband, too.

Talty has such a talent for crafting an everyday scene and then exposing something startling, something holy, about it. The fact that he’s a short story writer first really shows in this, his debut novel, because most chapters feel like that—like they can stand alone, that you can feel and experience so much just one chapter at a time.

Fire Exit is about Charles—a white man who grew up on the reservation with his Penobscot step-father, fell in love with a tribal member and got her pregnant but wasn’t able to be her baby’s father. Now, years later, watching his mother struggle with her memory and reliving his past, he thinks it’s time to tell his daughter who she really is, to expose secrets long hidden.

What follows is an exploration of family and responsibility, blood quantum and blood ties, and what our history carries or how it escapes us—bolsters or lets us down.

I mean suffice to say I absolutely loved it. Like his short story collection Night of the Living Rez, it spoke to hurts both great and small and was just so visceral and contemplative, emotionally resonant without mincing any words. Morgan Talty is such a talent and has easily established himself as a literary powerhouse and for me, an all/time favourite auto-buy author.

Here’s hoping this one gets all the hype it deserves!

Thank you so much to @knopfca for sending me this beautiful finished copy for early review. BUT, I was planning to buy this myself if they hadn’t!

Fire Exit by Morgan Talty is out June 4, 2024.

Interesting concept, very Character driven with some pacing issues. But I’m still reeling from the r slur being dropped in a very ableist scene that was not required for the plot. It completely destroy what could have been a really moving scene with the protagonist and his daughter.

I'm about 40% through this book, but I'm having a lot of trouble with the print size of the ARC on my Kobo. For some reason, I can't change the size and it's giving me serious eye strain as it's really tiny.

Coincidentally, I won an ARC from Goodreads, so I'm going to wait until that arrives in the mail and finish it then (I might even re-start it so that I'm not concentrating so much on the act of reading and more on the content of the book).

Then I will post my review on Goodreads.

Thanks NetGalley for the ARC of Fire Exit by Morgan Talty, published by Penguin Random House Canada
I enjoyed this novel, it is told well, I like the author's writing style. I liked the characters and the setting and the description of people and places.
The story's main character Charles, experiences many events as the author describes his life both past and present. The author lays the story out nicely and leaves the reader to use their imagination for certain outcomes. I liked the way the characters conversed with each other, sometimes blunt and to the point, like real life.
I would absolutely read more books by this author

4.5 stars
This book was very character driven. It wasn't particularly exciting; it wasn't fast paced. But I was never bored. It was easy to pick up and feel absorbed. I wanted to know how Charles would find his daughter. I wanted to know if his relationship with his mother would improve. I wanted to know how he would carry on because I cared about him. He lived on the edge of two cultures, never really feeling a sense of belonging in either. It was a very interesting perspective.

We begin with a wish. An urge to speak the truth and share a story. Charles sits on his porch across the river from the daughter he wasn't allowed to raise. He sits and watches just as he's watched her grow. To her, he's a white man who lives across the river from the Penobscot Reservation.

Charles wants her to know who he is but has he really thought this through? What about her wants? Or the mother’s? Or the man who has been raising her for more than 20 years? That's not all he has to consider. He has an always-drunk friend mulling about, and a mother who is descending deeper into dementia each day.

The past, both known and unknown, told and untold, is ever present in the relationships, minds, and actions of these characters. This is neither a slow burn nor a blistering comet. Fire Exit simmers at just the right temperature to keep you engaged from start to finish.

With powerful, hard hitting lines and poignant observations about life, Morgan Talty masterfully tells a story about the stories that make up our lives. About what happens to our spirits or souls when we live with interrupted or incomplete stories.

Stories are in our blood. They are the truths we are made of, they bind us to some, allow us to connect with others. Be willing to share, be willing to listen. You won't regret this book.

Charles was raised on the Penobscot reservation by his white mother and Indigenous stepfather but was forced to leave at 18 since he is not, by blood, Indigenous. He has moved across the river from where he can see the reservation. Now in his fifties, he is wracked by guilt and a sense of loss, trying to overcome a long estrangement from his mother and forced to keep secrets including of a daughter, whose Indigenous mother chose to leave him so that she could raise her on the reservation, and who doesn’t know about him.

Told in two timelines and in the first voice by Charles, Fire Exit by Morgan Talty is a beautifully written, powerful, and poignant novel about a man who is both part of and separated from his community by blood, by secrets, and by the river that flows between them. The characters are fully drawn with backstories and with flaws that make them both relatable and redeemable. The story is often dark and bleak as Charles recounts his sense of loss of his home, his past, his mother who is sinking into dementia but mostly of his daughter but it is also always infused with the love he wants to share with her. This is, in many ways, a very emotional even melancholic tale but never crosses the line into melodrama and ends on a hopeful note. I read an ebook of this novel while listening to the audiobook narrated by Darrell Dennis who does an amazing job of giving Charles a voice.

I received an e-arc of this novel from Netgalley and Penguin Random House Canada and an audiobook from RB Media in exchange for an honest review

This is a rich and powerful book. The narrative voice is authentic and raw. Charles doesn't leave out his own indiscretions, nor does he leave out how his actions may have affected others. This is a book about lies and secrets, how family withholds truth from another person, and how that omission affects us. Charles wants his daughter to know the truth about herself, but underneath that narrative runs the desire for his own knowing of a past story, his own story. Unfortunately his mother has just been diagnosed with dementia and often can't even remember who he is.

The skillful telling of this story made me constantly wonder what Louise (his mother) is hiding. What secret she is keeping from Charles. I loved how the narrative moved back and forth in time, leaving me with even more questions as the story progress.

This will be an author I'll want to read whatever he writes!

Thank you NetGalley for giving me this ARC!

This story has depth. Though slow, it takes the reader down the path of finding identity, and loyalty to family. The story of the son and the mother is heartbreaking, the son's devotion to his mother heartfelt. Talty knows how to weave a story

I really struggled with this one. It took me longer than normal to finish as I just kept setting it aside.

While the premise of the book was interesting and had potential, I just found myself struggling to connect with or care about any of the characters. The book is about the struggles Charles has faced, being removed from the reservation and never being allowed to know his daughter. Unfortunately, I just found the entire book slow and depressing.

Thank you Netgalley for an ARC of Fire Exit. As always, all thoughts are my own.

I really enjoyed Night of the Living Rez by Penobscot Nation member, Morgan Talty and was excited to see how he would move from short stories to a novel. I am happy to say he has done so very successfully!

Following Charles who sits on the side of the river opposite the reservation, we see him watching as his daughter who has been raised by her indigenous mother and by a man who is also indigenous, grows up. Due to blood quantum rules, Elizabeth needs to have two parents from the reserve and Charles is white. She doesn’t know about her birth father and now watching his adult daughter, Charles wants to tell her her history. Charles is also dealing with a mother who is suffering dementia and depression and a best friend who is an alcoholic. This story is not so much about what happens if/when he tells her but rather the process of going through life not being able to tell his daughter about him and how it affects him. Of equal importance to the story is the relationship he has with his mother and the guilt he feels about the death of his stepfather.

The imagery Talty puts forward is vivid and the characters clear. He holds back on several occasions in sharing the what happens next which created some curiosity but perhaps not the level of drama that the writer intended. This didn’t bother me much as I most enjoy character driven stories and while I need plot to drive the story forward, do not focus on that as much. I am curious how other readers will find the plot for this one.

The highlight of Fire Exit for me was the story of his mother and her dementia and lifelong depression and how Charles saw himself through her eyes. Charles seems to have made a vow to himself to always attend to someone’s requests/needs after losing his stepfather. He regularly drives his friend home from the pub and makes himself available to his mom as much as he can.

Thank you to @netgalley and @knopfca for an ARC in exchange for my honest opinions. Fire Exit comes out June 4, 2024.

This is a novel about Charles a non-native that lives across the river from his one-time mistress Mary, her husband Roger and unknowing daughter Elizabeth, who live on the reserve. Charles a terminal bachelor is agonized with telling Elizabeth that he is her biological father. Charles mother Louise has suffered her entire life from depression but now is showing signs of dementia and more often doesn’t recognize him as himself. Charles’ friend Bobby, a mostly drunkard, likes Louise and feels she is the mother he never had, and sometimes looks after her. Things come to head when Charles’ decision to tell, forces Roger and Mary to take action. “We are made of stories, and if we don’t know them —the ones that make us—-how can we ever be fully realized? How can we ever be who we really are?” Despite Charles not being allowed into Elizabeth’s life, he never stopped thinking about her wellbeing. I loved this about Charles. This is a touching story about relationships and family history. 4.5 out of 5 stars!

I found this melancholy book, written in the first person, a very intriguing read. Although sad throughout, there is hope and joy too. Morgan Tally’s main character Charles is conflicted , yet articulate and wise in his working through his thoughts on his upbringing on a reserve while not being of native “ bloodline “. The questions he presents to the reader are so very honest and they challenged me at every turn.

This was a very good book. I was hooked from the first page.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for an ARC of this novel.

This quiet, melancholic story is about Charles Lamosway, son of the depressive Louise and a father he doesn’t remember, and adoptive son of Fredrick, of Maine’s Penobscot tribe. On one level, it is a story about belonging and boundaries. Where does the white Charles ‘fit’, growing up on the reservation with a beloved Native stepfather who is always there during his mother’s frequent lapses into deep depression, who tends to both so lovingly, who ultimately puts his life on the line to cover for him? Fredrick is his assurance of belonging; his death separates him emotionally from his mother and community. He blames himself. Louise, left adrift, claims not to blame him but does.

On a terrible snowy night, Charles had refused to accompany Fredrick on his fatal hunting trip because he was waiting for news that would also serve as a badge of belonging and one of exile. His daughter Elizabeth (Ellie) was born. He had agreed with her mother, Mary, that he would not claim paternity because for the baby’s sake. To do so, with the state’s imposition of ‘blood quantum’ regulations, would strip their child of all Penobscot rights and make her. Like Charles, she would be someone who belonged nowhere, a human being with no claims to her own history and culture, and no status.

This secret, that he keeps even from his mother, eats away at his soul as he sinks into alcoholism, self-loathing, and grief. His sole consolation is discretely watching the little family that might have been his across the narrow river that physically separates their homes. He tells himself his watchful obsession is for Elizabeth’s sake, but her adoptive father Roger (whom she believes to be her biological father) is as good to her as Fredrick had always been to him. After much pleading, Mary brings her to visit Charles when she is three. The visit, for which he prepares meticulously, does not go well. He has no further contact for 20 years, sadly watching her grow up across the river.

But blood, eventually, will out in other ways. Although a successful young teacher and homeowner, Ellie’s own depressive demons bring her into ECT treatment just as Louise, with whom Charles has re-connected, also undergoes ECT. Mary, Ellie, and the by-now mostly lost in dementia Louise connect briefly, as strangers do in hospital waiting rooms. Only Mary and the immobilized Charles know their true connection. But Charles now becomes convinced that his daughter has to know the missing pieces of her own story. And his mother, who frequently forgets her own son, must know her grandchild before it is too late.

There is no Hollywood ending, with the requisite all-is-forgiven joyful reunion. This is the story of all too many lives, perhaps even more so among the colonized Native American peoples. Resolutions, if they come at all, are hard to attain, take up lifetimes, and are imperfect. But that is the beauty of this quiet, tender novel. There is suffering, there is injustice, there are desperate secrets. Sadness, regret and self-recrimination are woven throughout. Fredrick and Roger, the two stepfathers, say little and are mostly absent; Fredrick dies when Charles is barely 18, and Roger is largely seen quietly caring for his family across the river. Yet these selfless big-hearted men are beacons in the darkness that surrounds Charles. These men embody Native American culture’s expansive notion of family and of children as blessings to all. His mother, her disturbed neighbour, his profoundly alcoholic friend Bobby, his troubled childhood friend Gizos—all bring kindness and comfort in their own ways.

This seems a simple story, simply recounted by Charles, that delves into his past as much as his present. It also points forward to possible futures exactly where none seem possible. In the hands of a truly skilled storyteller, underlying love and hope are also ever present. Some things can never be changed, but some can. Fire destroys, but it also purifies and leaves new spaces for old—the needed ‘exit.’ This novel by Morgan Talty, who is of Penobscot heritage, is one of the year’s best.