Review by Booklist Review
Hickey's polished debut novel takes place in a few fraught days preceding an election at the fictional Passage Rouge Indian Reservation in northern Wisconsin. The novel's narrator, 30-year-old Mitch Caddo, is attempting to help his childhood friend Mack win reelection as tribal president against Gloria, an activist and best-selling memoirist. Mitch, an Ivy League--educated lawyer, spent a few years of his childhood and adolescence on the reservation but moved around often with his single mom, leaving him feeling like a perpetual outsider and a "suburban Indian." His mission to support Mack, about which he already has serious doubts, is further undermined by a series of protests, the objections of Mack's father (and Mitch's sole father figure), an FBI investigation, and Mitch's desire to win back his childhood sweetheart, Layla, who works for Gloria. At its heart, this is a novel about the difficulties of belonging to a family or a community while plagued by an unsettled conscience and about the ways in which ambition and power can have drastic results on any playing field.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Hickey's engrossing debut revolves around a tribal power struggle and a young political fixer's reckoning with his identity. At 30, narrator Mitch Caddo is the youngest-ever operations director for the Passage Rouge Nation of Lake Superior Anishinaabe in Wisconsin. Due to his "white-passing face" and Cornell law degree, Mitch is derided as a "J. Crew Indian," but his close friendship with tribal president Mack Beck, whom he helped get elected, affords him power and prestige. Now, however, Mack's facing a tough reelection challenge from opponent Gloria Hawkins, whose campaign levels the same allegations of inaction and mismanagement against Mack that plagued his predecessor, and who happens to be backed by Mack's adoptive father, Joe. As the campaign's de facto fixer, Mitch launches a smear offensive against Hawkins, which dredges up evidence that Joe embezzled tribal funds. Though the prose can be clunky (Mack's face is described as "ursine" six times), there's a great deal of satisfaction in watching Hickey gradually peel back the layers of Mitch's ambition, bravado, and questionable ethics to reveal his vulnerabilities, especially as the political machine begins to falter during the increasingly explosive election season. It's a fresh take on the political novel. Agent: Michelle Brower, Trellis Literary. (Apr.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A fixer for a Native American tribal leader is caught in the drama of a tense election season. Mitch Caddo, the narrator of Hickey's assured debut, is 30 years old and introduces himself as "the youngest ever tribal operations director for the Passage Rouge Nation of Lake Superior Anishinaabe," a Wisconsin tribe with 5,000 enrolled members. It's a step up from his previous work as a tribal attorney working family-court cases. But as the election for tribal president approaches, he's torn: He knows that his old friend Mack Beck, the current president, who's taken up residence in a suite at the local casino hotel, is an incompetent boor, and that Mack's main political strategy--banishing and disenrolling those who fall into legal trouble and effectively paying off the tribe via annual checks from the general fund--at once weakens and alienates the community. As Mitch does disreputable things on Mack's behalf, such as creating burner Facebook accounts smearing his opponent, Mitch is prompted to reconsider his past. Joe Beck, who's the tribal counsel, Mack's adoptive father, and a mentor to Mitch after his mother's death, is disappointed in the mudslinging. Mack's sister, Layla, with whom Mitch had a brief fling, is even more resentful. Keeping the timeframe tight--the story runs from Thanksgiving to the election the following Tuesday--escalates the intensity of a story that includes a plane crash, a community riot, hovering FBI agents, and a police department that's much too comfortable using military surplus equipment. But most of the tension resides within Mitch, who enters the story with plenty of swagger--"I execute the decisions of a multi-million-dollar corporation that also happens to be a sovereign nation"--while slowly recognizing the perils of his braggadocio. It's not hard to see the events in this small community as an allegory for larger themes of corruption in the Trump era, but Hickey avoids big symphonic flourishes and instead emphasizes the cost to individuals. A big-minded book about small-town politics. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
