Fire Exit
A novel
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A Best Book of the Year by TIME o The New Yorker o ELLE o NPR o Harper's Bazaar o Finalist for the 2024 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the 2024 Maya Angelou Book Award o Longlisted for the 2025 Joyce Carol Oates Prize, 2025 Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the 2024 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction o 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?
About this Author
MORGAN TALTY is a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation. His debut short story collection, Night of the Living Rez, won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, the American Academy of Arts & Letters Sue Kaufman Prize, the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, the New England Book Award, the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 Honor, and was a Finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, the 2023 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Prize, and The Story Prize. His writing has appeared in The Georgia Review, Granta, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, Narrative, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. Talty is an assistant professor of English in Creative Writing and Native American and Contemporary Literature at the University of Maine, Orono, and he is on the faculty at the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing as well as the Institute of American Indian Arts. He lives in Levant, Maine.
Reviews
Shortlisted for the 2024 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
Finalist for 2024 Maya Angelou Book Award
Longlisted for the 2025 Dublin Literary Award
Longlisted for the 2025 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, TIME, NPR, Elle, and Amazon
"Spellbinding. . . . a compassionate portrait of a man who is desperate to understand who he is and where he came from." --TIME, A Top 100 Book of the Year
"[Fire Exit] does not shy away from blistering questions of belonging and identity, but rather leans into them, in taut, often precise prose." --The New York Times Book Review, A Best Book of June
"Gripping. . . . A thoughtful, heartfelt exploration of what it means to be part of a family and a community." --Associated Press
"Tender and heartbreaking. . . . sweetened with touches of humor, the novel raises important questions about human connection and belonging." --Booklist, Starred Review
"Utterly absorbing. . . . compassionately addresses tough choices in matters of family and love." --Shelf Awareness
"Remarkable. . . . An outstanding new voice with a lot to say." --NPR
"Lacerating." --Chicago Tribune, A Best Book of Summer
"An undeniable classic." --Chicago Review of Books, A Best Book of June
"In this deliberately paced, moody novel, Talty, himself a citizen of the Penobscot Nation, considers questions of identity." --Kirkus Reviews
"Exquisite. . . . Talty's novel . . . reveals a dexterity with the form and unflagging affection for his characters. . . . [Fire Exit] teases out themes [of] the twinned scourges of poverty and booze; emotional warfare between generations; the quiet rage that pulses amid Indigenous communities. . . . Soulful and assured." --Star Tribune
"Poignant. . . . Gripping. . . . A thoughtful, heartfelt exploration of what it means to be a part of a family and a community." --Pique Magazine
"Absolutely soars. . . . you will come out of this book better than you were going in." --Barnes & Noble, A Most Anticipated Debut of 2024
"Cements his status as a writer to watch." --Harper's Bazaar
"Beautifully written, sometimes funny, often heartbreaking and hopeful against all odds. Reminiscent of the work of Raymond Carver." --BookPage
"Immersive, thought-provoking. . . . Talty doesn't miss a step in switching from short stories to a novel, and there's no sophomore slump in this second book; indeed, Fire Exit cements his reputation as one of our best young writers." --Portland Press Herald
"Original. . . . Irresistible. . . . Fire Exit is one of those books that will become more meaningful with the days, weeks, and months after closing the cover." --Independent Book Review
"Talty uses the secret-room intimacy of the novel to show us things that feel excluded from other forms of talking and thinking--things whose embarrassing and painful nature have given us an excuse to pretend they don't exist. His honesty gives a thrilling charge . . . It's Talty's commitment to the hungover, anti-lyrical nature of fiction that gives the cathartic moments in Fire Exit their beauty and communicative power. At the end of the day, that's what the book's realism moves us toward: not the wallowing that makes so many depictions of hardship feel sentimental and exploitative but a desire to show us a reality that we recognize, and in so showing give us something to share--something we can have in common." --Los Angeles Review of Books
"Fire Exit, Morgan Talty's debut novel, is utterly consuming. With this book, Talty more than fulfills the promise of his glorious short story collection, Night of the Living Rez. The storytelling is both spellbinding and quietly devastating. The novel is ultimately about family and belonging, about the stories we need to know even when they threaten to burn our lives down. A father desperately wants to let his daughter know about her body's secret history, even while his mother forgets her son altogether. This book is filled with humor, and humanity's strange wonder at its own desperation and depravity, as only Talty can do, with his subtle charm and crystalline prose, his sober reckoning with what love can and cannot do, what healing is and is not possible in our families. The novel absolutely smolders." --Tommy Orange
"Fire Exit is gorgeous. A genuinely original examination of the costs we pay to tell ourselves certain stories about who we are and where we come from. Talty is a revelation on matters of the heart, particularly the tenderness and warfare of contemporary manhood. This is that rare thing: a frankly honest novel about hard things written without a trace of bitterness. I loved it." --Brandon Taylor
"Talty's writings feels to me like a gift of many lifetimes. Forgiveness, Morgan shows us, is also the work of a lifetime. The people to whom we feel closest can somehow be right beside us in the kitchen and simultaneously on some unreachably distant planet. People rotate away from each other for days or seasons at a time, and it's miraculous when they return to find each other again, turning towards each other instead of away. It's a treacherous thing, to love another person in this world that mixes so much beauty with so much sorrow. Thank you for reminding us, Morgan, that it is the necessary thing." --Karen Russell
"[A] humane, beautifully crafted novel." --The Observer
"[A] tender and unwavering look at the experience of a community that attempts to grapple with its painful past--and its future." --TIME
"[A]" lean, serious, impressive novel. . . . Talty's prose is exacting and balanced - sentences that are, as Baldwin would have it, "clean as a bone". . . . bristles with fiercely internalised feeling and enigmatic tension." --The Guardian
"Morgan Talty's debut novel is a feat of magic, deftly delivering both gut-wrenching sadness and overwhelming love in one slim, spare volume." --2025 Dublin Literary Award nominating library
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