Fire Exit
A Novel
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4.3 • 15 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A TIME, The New Yorker, ELLE, NPR, Harper’s Bazaar Best Book of the Year
Winner of the 2025 Housatonic Book Award
Finalist 2024 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the 2024 Maya Angelou Book Award
Shortlisted for the 2025 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award
Longlisted for the 2025 VCU Cabell First Novel Award, 2025 Joyce Carol Oates Prize, 2025 Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the 2024 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
“Utterly consuming. . . . Fire Exit absolutely smolders.”—Tommy Orange
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.
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?
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
A man wrestles with the choices that shaped his life in this poignant debut novel. Charles Lamosway grew up across the river from a daughter who never knew him, keeping his distance to protect her life on the Penobscot reservation—where he was raised but no longer lives. He struggles to keep his secret while dealing with his mother’s declining health and his place in the world at large. Celebrated author Morgan Talty (Night of the Living Rez) spins a spellbinding tale about loss, longing, and the true meaning of legacy. Talty’s characters feel more like friends and neighbors than works of fiction, with quirks and flaws that endeared them to us fiercely. (Especially Charles’ troubled friend Bobby.) This bittersweet story transcends one man’s challenges, leaving you to contemplate larger notions of family history, tribal customs, and what it really means to belong to a community.
