Review of ​Fire Exit by Morgan Talty

​Fire Exit by Morgan Talty is a novel about a man, Charles, who lives across the river from the Penobscot reservation and tries to reconnect with his daughter, Elizabeth, who doesn’t know he’s her father. Though, because he’s not native, Elizabeth’s mother, Mary, wanted to disguise the fact of Elizabeth’s origin so she could fully embrace her Penobscot identity. The novel follows Charles as he watches Mary and Elizabeth across the river, as he cares for his mother whose memory is slowly fading, and makes friends with Bobby, a man whose drunkenness over takes him. Though when Charles takes his mother to get checked for her twisted ankle, he tells the doctor that she has depression, so is recommended Electroconvulsive Therapy. This is where we meet Elizabeth in her current state who also is getting treated, but only Mary and Charles know her true origins. Then, when Mary finds out Charles plans to tell Elizabeth he’s her father, Mary warns it would be a terrible, world-shattering idea for Elizabeth. Then, during a massive snow storm, Charles decides to leave his mother in search for a missing girl he believes to be Elizabeth. This proves fatal because while Charles finds Elizabeth had taken his gun and sat burning in Charles’s step-father’s home where he rescues her, Charles’s mother is forgotten. Then when Charles recovers from the burns and returns to his mother who has soiled her sheets, he takes care of her before leaving to talk to Elizabeth. At the hospital, Charles tells Elizabeth the truth about him, while forgetting his own mother at home. When he returns the next day, he finds his mother dead in the wet sheets that he’d washed for her. At the funeral, Mary and Elizabeth are there to pay their condolences and provide a possible future for Charles to be in Elizabeth’s life. The novel weaves in other plots about Charles’s childhood friend, Gizos, who was the son of the tribe leader and beaten by his father because he was gay. Though, it was blamed on Charles, which further distanced him from the reservation. Gizos then comes back when his father dies, showing Charles his life as a married man with a son. We also get to see Charles and Mary’s past as kids, the first and only time Charles meets Elizabeth, and how Charles’s step-father’s death could be attributed to him.
 
Talty is a master at crafting narratives that weave in and out of each other, telling stories that impact everything else. I felt the chapter with Gizos being beaten and his father blaming Charles was so raw with the last moment of Gizos shooting into the sky to be so poignant. It’s a novel about family, what secrets we hold to keep our families safe, fatherhood, friendship, and love. A truly remarkable read.
 
Final Rating: 5/5