Book review: Indigenous author explores the issue of bloodlines in his debut novel, ‘Exit from Fire’

Morgan Talty followed the success of her award-winning story collection “Night of the Living Rez” with a moving first novel that explores the question of what constitutes identity – family or tribe?

“Fire Exit” is narrated by a white man named Charles, who lives across the river from the Penobscot Nation in Maine. For years, he watched from afar as Elizabeth, the child he fathered with a native woman, grew up on the reservation with her mother, Mary, and her native stepfather, Roger. He wants to tell the truth about his paternity, but Mary insists on keeping it a secret.

Charles’ desire is motivated in part by a history of mental illness in his family. When the novel begins, his mother, Louise, who has suffered from bouts of severe depression for years, also shows symptoms of dementia. She risks losing any memory of their shared family history, a history Charles wants Elizabeth to know.

Unfortunately for Charles, biology has been destiny. The son of a white mother and father, he was raised on the reservation by Louise and her second husband, Fredrick, a native. But at age 18, he had to leave the reservation because of a tribal law that prohibited anyone who wasn’t Native from living on the land. It was this same law that led Mary to tell him, after finding out she was pregnant with his child, “The baby can’t be yours.”

Charles, however, has little use for the complicated and controversial “blood quantity” rules that many tribes use to control citizenship, which are based on the idea that the amount of “Indian blood” in an individual can be quantified. Despite his racial identity as a white man, he feels connected to the people and land where he grew up. “It was Fredrick’s love that made me feel native. He loved me so much that I was, and still am, convinced that I was his, part of him… That’s how I felt about Elizabeth.”

The conflict between Mary and Charles comes to a head when Elizabeth, who has grown up to be a deeply troubled young woman, goes missing and Charles is enlisted to help find her during a northeast of epic proportions. It’s a moving end to a thoughtful, heartfelt exploration of what it means to be part of a family and a community. Is it a matter of blood, biology or simply bonds of love?

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