This Town Sleeps

January 1, 2020
A young gay man reckons with love, tribal lore, and a decades-old murder in this rangy debut novel. Marion, the main narrator of Staples' first book, isn't where he wants to be, and that's back in his hometown on Minnesota's Ojibwe reservation. A brief stint in the Twin Cities ended with busted relationships, but his best romantic prospect in the area is deeply closeted former high school classmate Shannon, who has the unglorious job of attending to animal carcasses on a resort island. Still, Staples, an Ojibwe writer, wants to suggest that the best way to move forward is by facing one's past head-on. The notion arrives first via symbolism: As children, Marion and his friends spooked each other by saying a dog died under the merry-go-round at the playground, and now that dog reappears (or seems to) in Marion's presence. That incident sparks Marion's investigation into his high school days, in particular the murder of Kayden, a basketball star who became a father shortly before he was killed. Plotwise, the story is a stock hero's-journey tale, as Marion lets go of his skepticism of Ojibwe spiritualism, discovers the truth about Kayden's death, and finds a community along with a degree of emotional fulfillment. But credit Staples for complicating the story in some interesting ways, from shifting perspectives from Marion to other townspeople (with a particular emphasis on Native women), a smirking humor that cuts the mordant atmosphere ("What do Indians call a lack of faith?" "Being white"), and a graceful handling of Ojibwe culture. In its later stages, the story seems to keep sprouting tentacles as new characters and revelations emerge, which saps some of its narrative drive, but it returns affectingly to the messy fates of Marion and Shannon. A knotty portrait of Ojibwe life with some winningly uncanny touches.

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February 3, 2020
In this promising but slack debut, Staples depicts a Native American community with a haunted past and a bleak future. Marion Lafournier is a 26-year-old gay Ojibwe man, cynical and wry, who feels stuck in Geshig, a small reservation town in Minnesota that “crushes any form of ambition.” He begins a clandestine affair with former prom king Shannon Harstad, who struggles to square his secret homosexuality with his conception of masculinity. While pursuing this fraught relationship, Marion encounters an otherworldly dog—a manidoo, or revenant—and follows him to the grave of Kayden Kelliher, a teenager murdered by another boy years earlier. Marion seeks to find out what the manidoo wants and why it has visited him in particular. A visit to a sweat lodge ceremony with a wonderfully rendered medicine man leads to the discovery that spirits are real, not a “stupid” superstition, and Kayden’s ghost follows Marion through an investigation of his own family’s history of violence and restless spirits. The novel’s two strands, the desultory mystery and the romance, never fully gel, and neither generates quite enough suspense or emotional resonance. Staples, though, can be marvelously funny (“Good mothers don’t give their sons marijuana. Great ones do”), and there are evocative tableaus of life in Geshig. This offers tantalizing glimpses of talent with a steady hand on mystical material.

February 15, 2020
On a reservation in a small northern Minnesota town, an Ojibwe man named Marion Lafournier begins a sexual relationship with a deeply closeted white man named Shannon Harstad, who insists he is straight. An element of magic realism enters the narrative when Marion encounters a ghost dog who leads him to the grave of a 17-year-old who had been murdered a decade earlier. This launches a series of flashbacks featuring women who had been involved with the murdered boy in the past. Returning to the present and another magic twist, Marion becomes engaged with the spirit of the murdered boy as his relationship with Shannon enters an emotional denouement. Staples' first novel is an arresting look at the intersection of past and present. Himself an Ojibwe, Staples writes with authority about his characters and setting. If his novel has a failing, it is that his female characters are often little more than names, leading to confusion in the flashbacks, but otherwise this is an auspicious debut with a memorable protagonist.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

February 1, 2020

DEBUT In small-town Geshig, in northern Minnesota, the center of reservation life for a number of Ojibwe, Marion Lafournier is a young gay man who once planned to leave town, but is drawn back, haunted by the community as are so many of his relatives. He hooks up with white former high school friend Shannon, who won't admit he's gay. That relationship draws Marion, as much as the stories of the town. In one, the murder of Kaydan Kelliher, an Ojibwe basketball star, comes alive when Marion discovers a ghost dog, a revenant that contains Kaydan's soul. This dreamlike debut reveals the memories and stories of Marion, Kaydan, and a number of women with legendary tales of losing the men in their lives. Those generational influences turn women into alcoholics and addicts who abandon their children in a haunted town. VERDICT With its multiple narrators and stories of ghosts, this debut will find its audience in those searching for #ownvoices authors with an authentic view of reservation life and the tragedies that haunt the communities.--Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2019

In small-town Geshig, which anchors an Ojibwe reservation called Languille Lake, a mid-twenties gay Ojibwe man named Marion Lafournier begins a relationship with former classmate Shannon, who's obsessed with his image as a straight white northern Minnesotan. Wandering the town one night, they raise the spirit of a dead dog, which leads them to the grave of Ojibwe basketball star Kayden Kelliher, murdered at age 17. Solving the mystery of Kayden's death hinges on connections between ancient Ojibwe legend and Marion's family. A debut championed by Tommy Orange.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.