Fire Exit

Talty's follow-up to Night of the Living Rez trades linked stories for a single narrator, Charles, whose fixation on the Penobscot daughter he can't legally claim gives the novel its tension, but the book is more interested in atmosphere than plot momentum. Reviewers have split on whether that's a virtue: the prose is precise and unshowy about alcoholism, dementia, and the mechanics of belonging, yet the timeline drifts between decades without much signposting. What holds it together is Talty's refusal to resolve Charles's status as an outsider neatly — the ambiguity is the point, even when the pacing tests patience.