“A tender and unwavering look at the experience of a community that attempts to grapple with its painful past—and its future.”
- Time, A Top 100 Book of the Year, Tin House
From the award-winning author of Night of the Living Rez comes a masterful and unforgettable story of family, legacy, bloodlines, culture and inheritance, and what—if anything—we owe one another.
ISBN
9781963108491
Language
English
Page count
256
Edition
Paperback
Sale date
January 27, 2025
Dimensions
5 ½ x 8 ½
About the Book
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. He caught brief moments of his neighbor Elizabeth’s life—from the day she came home from the hospital to her early twenties. But there’s something deeper and more dangerous than the river that divides him from her and the rest of the tribal community. It’s the secret that Elizabeth is his daughter, a secret Charles is no longer willing to keep.
Now, it’s been weeks since he’s seen Elizabeth, and Charles is worried. As he attempts to hold on to and care for what he can—his home and property; his alcoholic and bighearted friend Bobby; and his mother, Louise, who is slipping deeper into dementia—he becomes increasingly haunted by his past. Forced to confront a lost childhood on the reservation, a love affair cut short, and the death of his beloved stepfather, Fredrick, Charles contends with questions he’s long been afraid to ask. Is his secret about Elizabeth his to share? And would his daughter want to know the truth, even if it could cost her everything she’s ever known?
A Best Book of the Year at Time, The New Yorker, Elle, NPR, and Harper’s Bazaar
Finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, the Maya Angelou Book Award, and more
“Does not shy away from blistering questions of belonging and identity, but rather leans into them, in taut, often precise prose.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Talty is a beautiful craftsman.”
—The Washington Post
“Striking..”
—The New Yorker, a Best Book of the Year
“A gripping tale of legacy and community, inheritance and shared values, and what we owe one another.”
—People
Morgan Talty is a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation. He is the author of the nationally bestselling and acclaimed short story collection, The Night of the Living Rez. His writing has appeared in The Georgia Review, Granta, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, Narrative, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. Talty is an assistant professor of English in Creative Writing and Native American and Contemporary Literature at the University of Maine, Orono, and he is on the faculty at the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing as well as the Institute of American Indian Arts. He lives in Levant, Maine.
