Student Book Discussion

“Fire Exit”

Thursday, November 14, 2024

In person at Brandeis University, Waltham, MA

5:30 PM - 7:30 PM EST

The Mass. Center for Native American Awareness (MCNAA), in partnership with Brandeis University, is hosting a community book reading with local Native college students and Brandeis University students on Thursday, November 14, 2024 at 5:30 PM in honor of National Native American Heritage Month.

The event will focus on Fire Exit (2024) by Penobscot author Morgan Talty, best known for his award-winning debut novel, Night of the Living Rez (2022). Fire Exit is a masterful and unforgettable story of family, legacy, bloodlines, culture, and inheritance that explores the charged question–what constitutes identity, family or tribe?

Dr. Claudia Fox Tree (MCNAA) will facilitate the discussion organized on the Brandeis campus by Professor ChaeRan Freeze (Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies), and off campus by Burne Stanley-Peters (MCNAA).

“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”