OLD SCHOOL INDIAN

A Native American man returns home to heal wounds both literal and metaphorical.

Abe Jacobs, the hero of Curtis’ finely tuned debut, is 43 and seriously ill. He’s taken a break from his job as a bookseller in Miami (and from his wife, Alexandria East), to visit family on a Mohawk reservation in upstate New York. He’s suffering from chronic fatigue and lesions on his legs that baffle his doctors; while he waits for a formal diagnosis, he skeptically but desperately accepts some folk treatment from a great-uncle. Otherwise, he spends his stay reconnecting with friends and family, attempting to make sense of his various past struggles: a depression that led to a suicide attempt, a difficult open relationship with Alex, and a stalled career as a poet. That last challenge gives the novel a poignant, lyrical lift: An alter ego of Abe’s, Dominick Deer Woods, regularly intrudes on the narrative, sharing excerpts of Abe’s poetry and generally serving as his snarkier, more confident self. (“Abe? He’s just the guy with the rotting skin who panicked and fled his wife, friends, and job in Miami. Why should he need to know what’s going on? It’s just his sanity.”) Some of those sidebars deal with Native American life, from food to tribal relationships, to the bigotry that informs Abe’s skepticism of traditional medicine, to forced sterilizations, and more. A formal diagnosis, when it finally arrives, pushes the narrative into a deeper, more soulful, and in some ways more surprising territory. Thematically, the novel contains echoes of Leslie Marmon Silko’s classic Ceremony (1977), which also dealt with themes of trauma and Indigenous paths to healing. But Curtis’ voice is his own, and its ending, while a left turn, feels wholly earned.

An affecting tale of loss and healing that thrives through its seriocomic style.