I am very thankful the media group, the publisher, Netgalley, and Morgan Talty for granting me advanced digital and audio access to this book before it hits shelves on June 4, 2024, but it just wasn't for me.

MASTERFUL. Morgan Talty brings remarkable life and vigor to an otherwise somber and depressing story. In “Fire Exit”, Charles Lamosway has spent over two decades secretly watching his daughter Elizabeth grow up from across the river on Maine’s Penobscot Reservation. Burdened by a sick mother, an alcoholic best friend, and his own troubled past, he grapples with the decision to keep the truth of his relationship with his daughter a secret, until she suddenly goes missing.

Talty’s prose feels like stepping in Charles’ shoes and truly empathizing with his life. I felt so frustrated for him every time he found himself between a rock and a hard place because of someone else’s misgivings, lack of care, or ill-will. But I was also frustrated with Charles whenever he seemed to just let life slap him around. Ultimately, I just needed to accept the characters as they were and let the story flow. For me, what stood out the most is that this novel is a wonderful, powerful, and heartbreaking depiction of taking care of a parent with dementia. As Charles navigates his decisions involving his daughter, he takes care of a mother who often does not know who he is and increasingly refuses help. It reminded me of the high praise Anthony Hopkins received for his role in "The Father" (2020), where he played a man with dementia coming to terms with his changing circumstances. Both are done so well that you hope to never relate to the experience, but are grateful for the honest representation.

A brilliant debut novel, excellently narrated by Darrell Dennis; I very much look forward to reading more from Morgan Talty.

Very good story and excellent narrator on the audio version. Modern day Native American setting, from a different perspective. I enjoyed this and recommend.

Once again, Talty doesn't disappoint.

For some reason I often had the feeling like there was a second POV to Charles' POV, like he was split in more than a singular identity, as if split between his child self and his adult self he has yet to fully grow into? It felt both confusing and masterful.

His child aspect comes across as disillusioned and numb, afraid to hope or to reach for the better life he longs for, prisoner of his own immaturity and fear of letting go of what little he has, it can come across as generally unfeeling. His more adult aspect rebels against the unfairness of going unacknowledged. It's a strange portrait that you really have to sit with to appreciate.

As you would imagine with the last paragraph, it's not a book where there is much of a plot or action, it's really a character study and a reflection on grief, love, culture, and family in their many forms.

The narrator was pretty good, his narration was generally smooth and his voice acting was pretty minimalist which I personally really appreciated.

This review is for the audiobook version narrated by Darrell Dennis, of which I received an ALC from RB Media | Recorded Books through Netgalley, many thanks to both.

I wanted to read this because I had read Night of the Living Rez. I wasn’t a fan of the structure of the previous book (had no idea it was being told by 2 characters) but it last a lasting impression due to the depth of the characters and their stories. My other comment about that book was I felt like I didn’t learn about the tribe or why the characters were the way they were.

Happy to say I thought this book was different in both ways. The one thing that held consistent was the deep writing and character development. For me, this is the story of a lonely man, Charlie, with few people in his life trying to understand where he fits in life and wanting to be loved. Unwanted or pushed out by so many in life as those he did love fade away or are taken from him. How do you fit in when you have the heart and history of a culture but don’t have the DNA and so are pushed out of the only family you know. This is where I felt like I learned more about the tribe, the rules and how it reflected on the people both tribal and not. It answered many of the whys I had about why Charlie was the way he was and not just put him in a stereotypical position.

After a period of separation Charlie takes on the care giving role of his aging mom and she battles dementia. Watching Charlie take this responsibility showed the type of person he was and allowed the story to unfold as he moved between present and past. Can I also say I loved the way the stuffed elephant was weaved into the story.

Narrator was wonderful, enjoyed him in the last book also.

This has been posted to Goodreads.

Charles has always been on the outside looking in to the Penobscot Nation Reservation. Even as a kid, when his mother married a Penobscot man and they lived on the Reservation, he was always different. Now living just across the river, he’s watched the life of a girl named Elizabeth unfold…and never told anyone that Elizabeth was actually his daughter. Now that his mother Louise’s health is declining, he thinks it’s time that Elizabeth knows the truth, even if he’s the only one who thinks that.

This was a beautiful story about life, family, and the choices we make. It seemed to me that Charles would do anything for the people he cared about. He seemingly spent his whole life trying to make up for not being there when his stepfather died. Now all he wanted to do was be there for Elizabeth too.

This might be the best book I’ve read this year.

Thank you to NetGalley and RB Media for an advanced copy of this book!

Talty writes men who are damaged, but who yearn to grow and become a better version of themselves. Charles is plagued by circumstances that knock him down, some in his control others not, leading him to watch his daughter grow up and struggle from afar. He battles alcoholism, tries to care for a parent he has a complicated past with, lifts up a friend who can not make a good decision to save his life, and struggles to just be a functioning adult. Maybe I love Talty’s work so much because the men he writes are at a point where they are taking responsibility for their actions, processing what is in and out of their control and doing work (sometimes successfully, sometimes not) to be the men they want to be. To put it simply he writes men I would be proud to have in my life, men that I can root for without pity or some forced feeling of duty to help them.

On top of Charles, a complicated and rich character, Talty weaves in stories of the complexity of indigenous sovereignty under the US colonial structure, the challenge of family dynamics including the guilt and blame that inevitably follow in the wake of loss, and in the impossible decisions when a woman asks the father of her child to keep his distance. This element of the story is fascinating because of the political rather than personal/social reasons that this request is often made.

This book is meditative, as told through Charles' experience, we learn, stumble and grow with him. A wonderful follow up to Night of the Living Rez and an excellent read given the current conversations around the roles of masculinity, emotional intelligence and loneliness in men in American society.

For those that like audio - Darrell Dennis is a fantastic narrator who manages to infuse warmth and care into even exasperating experiences, reinforcing the deeper themes of any interaction.

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

5 stars

Come for the understated and gripping style but stay for the family and personal drama. Readers will be immersed in all of this as they enjoy this short but powerful debut novel from Morgan Talty.

As an incoming fan of Talty's short stories, I couldn't wait to engage with this novel. I was - as expected - NOT disappointed.

Charles, the m.c., has a deep secret that he somewhat troublingly keeps an eye on constantly, and he has a number of other challenges, too. Most of his drama revolves around friends and family, and prospective readers who really enjoy introspective characters who dig into these issues will find a lot to chew on here. There are secrets, sacrifices, instances of longstanding guilt and uncertainty, and deep-seated questions about how we can best connect with each other while maintaining a healthy sense of self.

For such a powerful title and cover, this novel has a quiet quality that made me even more drawn to the way events unfold. Some of that slow burn heightens the intensity that is often punctuated by challenging characters and Charles's interactions with them. I was fortunate to access both the ebook and audio version, and the narration of the audiobook is also excellent. I'll be recommending this format, especially, when and where accessible.

I enjoyed this thoroughly, remain a solid fan of this author, and look forward to what Talty offers up next.

For those who were entranced by the entangled short story-esque format and speculative fantasy/horror elements in Talty's debut are going to be sorely disappointed by this sophomore release. "Fire Exit" is comparatively a much calmer novel. Despite it's last gritty, direct, depiction of elements of residential life and history in a lot of ways, this story is no less resonant. Switching up tones between works is a move I appreciate from an author who wants to show the breadth of ways the tales and matters that they have in them can take form. Personally, while I greatly enjoyed the spookier potentially supernatural elements of the first, the format which I'm not usually opposed to and even enjoy, for some reason left me a little lukewarm. So this more traditional storytelling format worked better for me.

"Fire Exit" tackles so many topics that on the surface and by summary-- one I believe unfortunately gives a little too much away-- seems like a disorderly pile akin to throwing everything at the canvas hoping that rather common elements might just feel fresh. When you breath these elements down, however, and let them set to see the connections Talty is drawing, it is a somber web woven.

There have been several novels that tackle the issue of belonging. In recent days there have been a fair share of those that have talked about the rules of the tribal registers. I have never heard the discussion of cultural identity tackled in quite this way. One particular moment that on surface would seem rather contradictory but makes complete sense culturally is how someone can feel as part of a culture and yet still secluded from one group of people and yet makes the case for those who had never had a chance to grow up with their people to be able to claim as much and more right to that identity than they do.

Having been abandoned by a parent is a topic we've seen a lot from the perspective of the child and the issues that creates in their own sense of identity. Being a child of someone who took off because they knew I was in good hands and taken care of, this hit particularly hard to be put in his shoes to some extent. It is ironically amplified by the fact that this same individual suffered from early on set dementia.

Louise's struggles morphing from one set of issues to another was another interesting element. It painted the process of loosing yourself, the memories that emerge, and the connections we still latch onto something to really sift through. Granted, I do not frequently seek out books on this topic due to my own personal fears about genetics, but I always commend authors for presenting illness in the wide range of ways it manifests. It was also incredibly touching to see how our protagonist tried to see the light when he could to the situation.

Another element presented for comparison was Charles' and Bobby's different approaches to alcoholism. It again shows that there is not one single stereotype the fits all realities. This continual paralleling seems to be as much of a theme in this novel.

I don't want to conclude how very much storytelling is still at the heart of this. There are the stories that Charles took from his childhood friends. There are the stories that our own personal ones that we know about ourselves and who we share them with. Is there a responsibility to share certain parts of stories? What does it mean for your own story to be 'incomplete'. Do you need to know every element to be complete? What stories do we tell ourselves, or convictions, versus those like Louise who are constantly a new set of stories with a lack of continuity when we lose the ability to organize our history. What do we let others' interpretation of our stories influence who we see ourselves to be?

"Night of the Living Rez" might have been a slap and stab to the heart. "Fire Exit" may combustible, but feels more like an erosion. In the end, it might even stay with me longer. If nothing else, it certainly makes me wonder what style and how deep Talty is going to try to hit us next time. I only hope he doesn't tire of speaking for a part of my state's population that has too long been ignored.

I saw the review Tommy Orange left for this and knew i would enjoy it. It’s a story about stories. A complex yet interesting story that kept your attention. Overall i enjoyed still story to listen to and would recommend it!

I received a free advanced copy of this (audio) book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.