About Fire Exit

From the award-winning author Morgan Talty, 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.

Every week, we will be discussing a section of the book; follow along and learn more by visiting our BLR Book Club page, where weekly posts will live.

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Note: All pagination is based on the paperback version.

Week 3: Chapters 7-10 

Charles fantasizes about escaping his life. As Louise’s condition worsens, we get an up-close look at what it’s like to care for a loved one with dementia. 

1. How does Charles deal with his mother’s changing moods? 
2. When Louise asks, “You son of a fucking bitch, who are you?” he is unable to answer her question because he “does not know.” Why do you think he feels this way? 
3. Charles grapples with guilt over his stepfather’s death. He reflects, “In a perfect world, Frederick wouldn’t have gone hunting—he would have been at the hospital with me, with Louise, with Mary’s parents, Philip and Eunice, as Mary brought our child into the world for us all” (97). How did Charles’ world become imperfect? What might he pinpoint as the source of his life’s tragedies?