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Fire Exit: A Novel

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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? Read more

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tin House


Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 4, 2024


Language ‏ : ‎ English


Print length ‏ : ‎ 256 pages


ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1959030558


ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 53


Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.1 ounces


Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.81 x 0.93 x 8.81 inches


Best Sellers Rank: #497,971 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #285 in Indigenous Fiction #516 in Cultural Heritage Fiction #12,611 in Literary Fiction (Books)


#285 in Indigenous Fiction:


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Top Amazon Reviews

    • good book
Format: Kindle
This book is written about very ordinary people but somehow is so interesting. It's like you are walking through a life that anyone could experience but it is still gripping
Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2025 by colette
    • Difficult to rate
Format: Kindle
I think the book is about a group of people that don't have much and seem to pin there future happiness on some dream (moving away, telling a secret). There are some harsh realities and regrets explored. Makes you aware that not everyone has same starting point.
Reviewed in the United States on October 19, 2025 by Kindle Customer
    • beautifully written
Format: Kindle
I really love how Morgan Talty writes, and that’s probably why I kept going. in terms of plot I am not as impressed. This is a slow walk through the lives of a handful of characters. There is so much that could have been developed in terms of topics, such as mental health and Native Americans. instead he brushed the topics superficially and instead focused on the characters’ day to day lives which I really didn’t feel was worth a whole book. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2024 by JORDAN
    • Identity Crises
Format: Kindle
Fire Exit by Morgan Talty argues that we are all entitled to know our past, even if the truth is disorienting. Learning the whole story may fill in missing parts or provoke unasked questions. In Fire Exit, the issue is especially fraught because it deals with identity, namely the right to claim Native American identity if, lurking unbeknownst to a child raised as a full Indian, is a father’s non-native identity. Charles, the protagonist, was raised on the Penobscot reservation by his non-native mother and Indian stepfather with full knowledge of his story. He feels his daughter, conceived with his high school Penobscot girlfriend and now fully grown, is entitled to hers. The girl’s mother and indigenous husband, who raised the girl as his own, object. Entangled in Charles’s urge to tell his daughter her blood story is that his own mother’s memory is growing porous with Alzheimer’s. Moreover, he’s plagued by guilt that preoccupation with the girls’ birth kept him from preventing his stepfather’s death decades earlier. Fire Exit is replete with grief, remorse, mental illness, alcoholism, and death. Yet, the novel is not wholly bleak and morbid. On the contrary, Talty’s ineradicable faith in filial devotion and commitment to personal history is ultimately uplifting. As a writer myself (see my Amazon author page www.amazon.com/author/asewovenwords), I admire his refusal to shy away from difficult subjects with debatable answers. Fire Exit will make readers question their own stories. Warning: The choice not to know the truth comes at a price. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on September 28, 2024 by Ann S. Epstein
    • Good book depending on how you see it
Format: Audiobook
Overall good book, audio is good but you can interpret the story in different ways
Reviewed in the United States on September 23, 2025 by Oskar Mejia
    • A novel of sensations
Format: Kindle
There’s a lot going on here, but no real concrete truths. I don’t want to read too much into a native man writing from the perspective of a nonnative person, but it bothered me how passive and empty the protagonist was. What we know about him is secondhand. It seems like he works at a lumber yard, but then he has to go to faraway places for work, so that is uncertain. Time is slippery, ages are fuzzy. There is a lot to unpack here about race and identity, but much of it is contradictory. At one point a character points out how sad it is to see a white man want to be native, but then the key plot element hinges on a decision to conceal from a child their Caucasian heritage. Perhaps the protagonist is the problem. As written, he is a passive watcher. He reacts to the world and his worldview appears to be one of shallow acquiescence. At some point, I searched for evidence of the Depression that afflicted his mother, but if that is the case, it is not depicted effectively. All in all, a touching ending (which feels disconnected from the rest of the book) and some evocative prose make this meandering effort palatable. I would have loved to see more realistic relationships to help build on the intriguing premise. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2025 by Jason Adams
    • Very Good
Format: Hardcover
Love this man’s work. He’s a great read and an important person to support.
Reviewed in the United States on April 1, 2025 by S
    • This will be a classic
Format: Hardcover
This book was a slow burn. It seemed to have a deep literal and figurative meaning, and I believe it has the potential to be one of those books that become deeply examined for its literary statements on identity, uncovering and unpacking who we are, where we are, and who we call home in this liminal space tethered to dirt and flesh. I listened to this book when I first encountered it, but I have a feeling that if I visit the pages again, I will find much more power and meaning in the lines, words, and spaces between them if I allow myself to sit with it and absorb it with the time and space the author dedicated to pouring themselves into the pages. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on September 30, 2024 by momma red

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