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This book has an intriguing premise, taking aim at —basically the way the U.S. government and, more recently, native tribes, use “amount of Indian blood�� as defined by percent of ancestry traceable to supposed “full blood Indians�� to decide who is Native American for purposes of discrimination, inclusion and exclusion. The novel, written by a Penobscot author, is narrated by Charles, a man of white ancestry who was raised on the Penobscot reservation mostly by his stepfather, a tribal member, but kicked off at age 18 for lack of blood quantum. As an adult, Charles fathers a child with his girlfriend, Mary, who has a ¼ blood quantum, the minimum allowable for tribal membership—so to ensure that their daughter will also officially be ¼, rather than a mere 1/8, she marries another guy who is also ¼ and passes the kid off as his. Charles watches his daughter grow up from a distance, without having any relationship with her.

All of which seems like great fodder for a story; it’s the perfect sort of dystopian scenario for a literary novel. Unfortunately, despite its short length, it’s dull and boring, with a bafflingly passive narrator (Charles acts like all this was Mary’s decision, for instance, rather than owning the fact that he chose to never file for custody. I’m not sure he even realizes he made that choice). About 40% of the way through I realized I didn’t care about anyone in it and just skimmed the rest, reading in full the scenes involving the daughter in some way since that aspect interested me most.

Sadly, most of the book keeps the central conflict in a holding pattern, while taking it in boring directions. Instead of facing the blood quantum issue head-on, and whether the daughter (now in her late 20s) will face disenrollment by the tribe if the truth comes out, the stakes become the fact that she’s struggling with depression and how learning the truth might affect her mental health, which might have been more compelling if she were actually on-page rather than the reader learning all this secondhand. There’s a truly weird action-based climax that feels over the top and out of place, and the relationship between father and daughter never gets any real space. (view spoiler)[She ultimately learns about her paternity off-page, and their first moment of connection is the final scene of the book. It would’ve been far more interesting if that happened early and we got to see what happened next. (hide spoiler)]

Meanwhile we hear a lot about Charles’s senile mother, dead stepfather, and friends, most of which isn’t very interesting, and see a lot of his daily life, which is even less so. Charles never felt complete to me as a person—why is his life so empty? why is he so passive?—and as I read on his voice felt less and less convincing. It’s not an egregiously MFA voice, but he doesn’t much sound like a lumberjack either. It’s featureless, and thus so is he.

In the end, a big meh from me, and overall inferior to Talty’s first book. Part of me feels like I should round up to two stars from benefit of the doubt, and there’s certainly worse out there, but the other part says that’s a bit too generous for a 235-page, dialogue-heavy novel that I nevertheless struggled to get through. Anyway, I’m off to read The Indian Card soon, for an examination of issues around blood quantum not mired in this bland story.