Finalist for the 2024 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize ? Finalist for 2024 Maya Angelou Book Award
Longlisted for the 2024 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
"Remarkable."—NPR
"Spellbinding"—TIME, A Best Book of Summer
"Utterly consuming. . . . Fire Exit absolutely smolders."—Tommy Orange
From the award-winning author of Night of the Living Rez, comes a masterful and unforgettable story of family, legacy, bloodlines, culture and inheritance, and what, if anything, we owe one another.
Now, it's been weeks since he's seen Elizabeth, and Charles is worried. As he attempts to hold on to and care for what he can—his home and property; his alcoholic and bighearted friend Bobby; and his mother, Louise, who is slipping deeper into dementia—he becomes increasingly haunted by his past. Forced to confront a lost childhood on the reservation, a love affair cut short, and the death of his beloved stepfather, Fredrick, Charles contends with questions he's long been afraid to ask. Is his secret about Elizabeth his to share? And would his daughter want to know the truth, even if it could cost her everything she's ever known?