Safe Return Doubtful

American Literature – Published 2022

Though referred to as a collection of short stories this reads more like a novel as it follows a community living on the Penobscot Indian Reservation. Some of the stories were published individually in magazines in the year or so before this publication, which makes me think that the idea for the connection between them, and in particular the latter stories, came to Talty at a later stage.

Narrator David has troubles at home and increasingly looks elsewhere for companionship and camaraderie. As he moves from childhood into adolescence he not only loses his innocence, but his way in this world. The men in his life are bad influences, many of them medicating as a way to cope with their pasts. The women, his mother, sister and grandmother, offer him much more useful life lessons. Inevitably, it is the men he follows, and his addictions grow stronger until the final, extremely powerful, two chapters.

There isn’t necessarily a chronological order to the stories, rather the order is of when Talty wrote them, of David as a boy, as an adolescent, as a 28 year old man. That works really well as preconceived the reader may form are repeatedly proved incorrect, and a true picture of the community emerges. Recurring and imagery emerge subtly, and are never overstated.

The best in world fiction builds understanding and empathy in different cultures, especially when the writing is as good as this.
A theme that recurs is story-telling, and how they are passed down through generations, and how they get revised, exaggerated, or the opposite. This plays in to the larger theme of resilience, of the role that stories play after tragedy to enable those involved to move forward.

My GoodReads score 5 / 5