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.

I had a bit of trouble following the timeline. It jumped around a lot I found. The characters seem relatable even tho the main character seems very passive. It read like a memoir not a novel. The main character has a lot going on. A white man living on a reserve who has his child living her mother and another father to her her part of the culture. A mother who has dementia and fight’s alcoholism. Unresolved issues with a step father who dies in a hunting accident. It’s a lot to take in.
If you like a slow burn memoir style story this is definitely for you.