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.

With this post, we wrap our reading and commentary about Fire Exit. You can see all of the weekly posts by visiting our BLR Book Club page.

You can still be part of the discussion by joining the BLR Book Club Facebook Group.

And you’re invited to join us for a live conversation with the author, Morgan Talty, on June 11. Find more information and RSVP here.

Note: All pagination is based on the paperback version.

Week 7: Chapters 24-28

Charles joins in the search for Elizabeth. Instinctively, he tracks her to Fredrick’s fiery house, where she waits with the gun she has stolen from him.

1. Searching in the snow, Charles thinks, “I’ve been here before…there was something more to think about, right then, something that I knew that would have been powerful if it had come to me…” (209). What is the memory pressing on Charles at this moment?
2. When Charles visits Elizabeth at the clinic, she asks why her mother told her the truth. He responds, “We are made of stories, and if we don’t know them—the ones that make us—how can we ever be fully realized? How can we ever be who we really are?” (226). 
3. Elizabeth is the reason Charles was distracted from attending to Louise and also to Fredrick when they died. I’m not sure if this means anything. What do you think?
4. When Charles discovers Louise lying lifeless in bed, he is finally able to share the truth with her. He “just started talking, told her body the truth of every story I had ever been part of, beginning with who that elephant belonged to” (231).
5. How did the ending resonate for you? Do you think Charles has a relationship with Elizabeth in the future?

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.

To be a part of the discussion, don’t forget to sign up for the BLR Book Club Facebook Group.

For weekly reminders, sign up for BLR’s newsletter.

Note: All pagination is based on the paperback version.

Week 6: Chapters 20-23

Louise’s recriminations against Charles grow more severe. During a nor’easter, his worry about Elizabeth drives him into the thick of the storm.

1. In one of Louise’s rare lucid moments, Charles considers telling her the truth about Fredrick’s death. But “if that was one of the final times she spent knowing herself, knowing me, did I want to ruin it by pushing her into some dark depth about some truth that did not even matter?” (186). It’s interesting he keeps the truth from his mother but feels driven to reveal it to his daughter. Why do you think there’s a difference? 
2. At one point he thinks, “I wasn’t sure Louise knew who I was anymore, but I was quite certain I was nobody” (188). What does he mean? How is his sense of existence connected to Louise’s ability to remember? 
3. Louise tells Charles, over and over, “It’s all your fault.” Is it? 
4. When the wind whistles, Louise tells Charles, “Don’t whistle back” (197). Many Native American cultures believe that whistling attracts malevolent spirits.

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.

To be a part of the discussion, don’t forget to sign up for the BLR Book Club Facebook Group.

For weekly reminders, sign up for BLR’s newsletter.

Note: All pagination is based on the paperback version.

Week 5: Chapters 15-19 

Louise begins electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). During a secret nighttime visit, Mary reveals to Charles the extent of Elizabeth’s illness.

1. Louise’s loosening hold on reality—her confusion about Charles’ identity—causes long-buried resentments to emerge. How does this affect their relationship?
2. Through flashback, we learn why Mary separated Charles from their daughter: “She wanted Elizabeth to be ‘Native’” (139). What was she hoping to give their daughter?
3. Seeing Elizabeth at the ECT clinic reinforces Charles’ desire to reveal her paternity. “The blood she did not know about that ran through her body was tainted, flawed. This was why it was so important she know all of this, who I was and who her grandmother was. This was why her body’s secret history was important to know” (143).
   
   Gizos and Bobby caution Charles against it; Gizos even questions Charles’ interpretation of the past. Do Gizos’ words change your view of Charles’ reliability as a narrator?
4. Mary and Charles argue about the necessity of telling Elizabeth the truth. Charles postulates Elizabeth’s illness is due to her ignorance of her history. “Maybe that’s why she’s sick—maybe she needs to know her full story. Have you thought about that? Maybe her body and mind know something is missing” (169).
   
   But Mary believes the knowledge would break her. What do you think is the right choice? Should Charles reveal himself to Elizabeth?
5. Charles senses the presence of spirits—“Goog’ooks”—when he is at the clinic with Louise. He wonders if spirits are simply his “body’s remembering something I did not—this woman, Louise’s mother, from a time that I had no memory of” (160). I loved this reframing—that the feeling of being haunted resides, perhaps, in the memories stored within our bodies.

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.

To be a part of the discussion, don’t forget to sign up for the BLR Book Club Facebook Group.

For weekly reminders, sign up for BLR’s newsletter.

Note: All pagination is based on the paperback version.

Week 4: Chapters 11-14 

As Charles cares for Louise, he develops overwhelming anxiety (“like I’d known somehow I was going to be frightened by it even though it had yet to happen”). He is visited by his childhood friend Gizos and observes, with worry, Elizabeth moving back into her parents’ house.  

1. Gizos wants to find his birth mother. He asks Charles, “Have you thought to look for your [birth] father?” but Charles says no. Why isn’t he interested?
2. Gizos and his husband have adopted a Native boy whose parentage lies outside each of their tribes. He worries about his son’s culture becoming inaccessible: “He can’t be Lakota or Penobscot. He can only be what he is, and he’ll always be there…That’s his blood” (118). Why does he say, “This is such an Indian thing to worry about?
3. Charles isn’t Native, but he nevertheless understands Gizos’ meaning: “…I know and still know what it was like to both not belong and belong, what it was like to feel invisible inside the great, great dream of being. We’re all alike, even when we’re not” (118).

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.

To be a part of the discussion, don’t forget to sign up for the BLR Book Club Facebook Group.

For weekly reminders, sign up for BLR’s newsletter.

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?

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.

To be a part of the discussion, don’t forget to sign up for the BLR Book Club Facebook Group.

For weekly reminders, sign up for BLR’s newsletter.

Note: All pagination is based on the paperback version.

Week 2: Chapters 4-6 

We learn more about Charles’ past, including a pivotal event in his youth. Louise’s dementia worsens. The theme of body vs. mind deepens: “It’s sharp, like cold air…that your body knows something about your past that you don’t.”

1. Charles’s identity and place in the world is precarious. “I guess what I mean is that my situation on the reservation was already precarious, and this—this story—could snap what little thin line had held me in this place” (42).

2. An offhand remark from Bobby causes Charles to observe, “There’s nothing strange about a white person wishing to be Indian. It’s comical, if anything. And white people saying they’re Indian happens all the time…” (56). Do you think he’s right?
3. What does it mean, for Charles, to be Indian? How is one’s identity defined or erased? “To think that the reservation is what makes an Indian an Indian is to massacre all over again the Natives who do not populate it” (56).
4. The concept of “blood quantum” is used by the federal government to regulate Native populations and land. According to Wikipedia, “Native American tribes did not formally use blood quantum law until the government introduced the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, instead determining tribal status on the basis of kinship, lineage, and family ties.”
   
   Read more from Talty on this topic here.

5. During the era of slavery and Jim Crow, hypodescent, or the “one drop” rule, was a system of racial classification applied to African Americans. What are the governmental goals of legal classification systems like blood quantum and hypodescent?
   
   Find a useful summary here.
6. A great line: “Maybe all we are is creation’s translators, putting things like granite or oak or elephant or corn in a language they want to be put in, to give them bodies made of sound so they’re measurable” (32).

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.

To be a part of the discussion, don’t forget to sign up for the BLR Book Club Facebook Group.

For weekly reminders, sign up for BLR’s newsletter.

Note: All pagination is based on the paperback version.

Week 1: Chapters 1-3 

These first chapters draw us into the story: the world of the Penobscot Nation and its environs, where protagonist Charles Lamosway watches his secret daughter across the river. He wants to tell her something. 

1.     Notice the imagery of blood and the body—the idea that our body knows things that we do not: “There was a history I was a part of, a history my body had experienced and moved through, but I never knew it. It made me wonder how much I didn’t know” (16). What other things do you notice?

2.     Charles’ expulsion from the reservation at eighteen was an aftereffect of the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act of 1980. You can read more about this law here and here.

3.     Charles is a recovering alcoholic who attends AA meetings, where he befriends Bobby. He says, “We hear all the time that to quit something is to battle with the desire not to quit, but to be honest I don’t think that’s how it was with me. I wanted to drink once or twice, but that was it. Today, it would be just about impossible to convince me to drink” (29). How is Charles’ relationship with sobriety different than Bobby’s?

We’re excited to announce our first pick for the BLR Book Club: Fire Exit, a novel by Morgan Talty. Named a Best Book of the Year by TIME, The New Yorker, ELLE, NPR, and Harper’s Bazaar, Fire Exit is available on BLR’s Bookshop page, where a portion of every purchase goes to support community-building and programming.

Here’s a description:

It’s a book that’s as provocative as it is heartbreaking, posing questions about bloodlines, illness, and the stories we carry within our bodies.

The BLR Book Club will begin April 16th. Over the following seven weeks, we’ll read this compelling book together and make space for reflection and conversation. To be a part of the discussion, sign up for the BLR Book Club Facebook Group. We hope you’ll read along!

About the author

Talty co-directed, wrote, and acted in the documentary short Belongings, which premiered at Hot Docs 2023 and was named a Vimeo Staff Pick and Short of the Week.

Talty is an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Maine, where he teaches fiction, literature, and Indigenous studies. He is also on the faculty at the Stonecoast MFA Program. He serves as Senior Prose Editor for The Massachusetts Review.