Big Chief
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4.3 • 13 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2025 by The Washington Post, Debutiful, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, and LitHub
Publishers Weekly Writer to Watch for Spring 2025
“Propulsive...a masterclass...a dazzling, fast-paced pressure-cooker journey about not letting others define who we are, but rather deciding that for ourselves.” —San Francisco Chronicle
A gripping literary debut about power and corruption, family, and facing the ghosts of the past.
Mitch Caddo, a young law school graduate and aspiring political fixer, is an outsider in the homeland of his Anishinaabe ancestors. But alongside Tribal President Mack Beck, his childhood friend, Mitch runs the government of the Passage Rouge Nation, and with it, the tribe’s Golden Eagle Casino and Hotel. On the eve of Mack’s reelection, their tenuous grip on power is threatened by a nationally known activist and politician, Gloria Hawkins, and her young aide, Layla Beck, none other than Mack’s estranged sister and Mitch’s former love. In their struggle for control over Passage Rouge, the campaigns resort to bare-knuckle political gamesmanship, testing the limits of how far they will go—and what they will sacrifice—to win it all.
But when an accident claims the life of Mitch’s mentor, a power broker in the reservation’s political scene, the election slides into chaos and pits Mitch against the only family he has. As relationships strain to their breaking points and a peaceful protest threatens to become an all-consuming riot, Mitch and Layla must work together to stop the reservation’s descent into violence.
Thrilling and timely, Big Chief is an “unexpected, disturbingly funny” (The New York Times) and unforgettable story about the search for belonging—to an ancestral and spiritual home, to a family, and to a sovereign people at a moment of great historical importance.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
In Jon Hickey’s masterful debut novel, messy tribal politics crystallize into a thought-provoking personal reckoning. Mitch Cado, political fixer for the Passage Rouge Nation, is between a rock and a hard place. Trying to get his childhood friend Mack Beck reelected as tribal president puts him in direct opposition to Mack’s own adopted father and sister—Mitch’s mentor and his lost love, respectively. Hickey compresses all the action into the days immediately before the election, filling the novel to the brim with personal and political intrigue. Investigations, illicit deals, coercion, and an untimely death all batter Mitch like a mouse being played with by a cat, building to a crisis of conscience with no easy answers. Hickey brings his cultural perspective as a member of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians to the tale, skillfully creating a sense of the past always being part of the present. Big Chief carries major weight without ever feeling heavy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hickey's engrossing debut revolves around a tribal power struggle and a young political fixer's reckoning with his identity. At 30, narrator Mitch Caddo is the youngest-ever operations director for the Passage Rouge Nation of Lake Superior Anishinaabe in Wisconsin. Due to his "white-passing face" and Cornell law degree, Mitch is derided as a "J. Crew Indian," but his close friendship with tribal president Mack Beck, whom he helped get elected, affords him power and prestige. Now, however, Mack's facing a tough reelection challenge from opponent Gloria Hawkins, whose campaign levels the same allegations of inaction and mismanagement against Mack that plagued his predecessor, and who happens to be backed by Mack's adoptive father, Joe. As the campaign's de facto fixer, Mitch launches a smear offensive against Hawkins, which dredges up evidence that Joe embezzled tribal funds. Though the prose can be clunky (Mack's face is described as "ursine" six times), there's a great deal of satisfaction in watching Hickey gradually peel back the layers of Mitch's ambition, bravado, and questionable ethics to reveal his vulnerabilities, especially as the political machine begins to falter during the increasingly explosive election season. It's a fresh take on the political novel.
