First published 2022
Brian works the city desk at the Niagara Cascade newspaper, the only Indigenous reporter in a newsroom that pigeonholes him into covering reservation stories. He left his childhood on the nearby Tuscarora reservation behind, but when Tim gets attacked on a roadside and ends up hospitalized, Brian faces a crisis he cannot ignore. Tim is the brother of his late mother's boyfriend, a connection that pulls Brian back into the community he abandoned. The assault forces Brian to confront the threads of his past life and the relationships he severed when he moved to the city. As he navigates between his job and this family emergency, Brian struggles to balance his identity as a Haudenosaunee person with his American life. He must choose between the individualistic path that led him away from home and the communal bonds that sustained his people for generations. The story moves between Brian's current predicament and memories of growing up on the reservation, showing how his past shaped the man caught between two different ways of being in the world.
Genres: literary-fiction, american-fiction, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, found-family
Setting: Niagara Cascade, Tuscarora Reservation
Period: contemporary
411 pages · Kindle Edition · Levine Querido