Powerful –   way more than I expected.  For some reason I was more impressed by the first half of the book than the latter.  I have no idea why.  This is supposed to be a collection of short stories but it’s almost more like a novel because the stories build in ways other than plot and character development. They build in terms of “life on the Rez.”  When the 1st story opens the 1st person narrator, David, is 6 years old and lives with his mother and Frick, her boyfriend, along with the boy’s sister, Paige and sometimes his grandmother.  

Night of the Living Rez
by Morgan Talty
2023 
Read by Darrell Dennis 7h 6m
Rating – 8.5 

They all live on the Penobscot Indian Nation reservation on the east side of Maine.  The protagonist is grown when he tells these stories of poverty, addictions and traumas.  

There’s an almost overpowering sensualness to the tales. There’s the visual of course,  how brown is your skin and what’s on TV?  But there are also  the smells of smoke, garbage, dead turtles and perfume, etc.  There is texture in the drops of water running down the boy’s cheeks or a caterpillar crawling up his leg. Then there are the tastes of cooked fish, coffee and fry bread. And then there are the sounds, the phone ringing, the baby crying, something sizzling on the stove.

As the book moves along the chronology is within th stories themselves, not between them which adds its own feeling of brokenness. Death and grief are also huge themes. David goes from age about 6 to 28 in the book – an average kid on an average Rez.