Mary’s Pick of the Week: Big Chief by Jon Hickey

The Passage Rouge Nation of Lake Superior Anishinaabe in Wisconsin is a microcosm of small-town politics with the added complications of being a sovereign nation.   “What happens when the rez dog finally catches up with the car” is a question our main character, Mitch, asks himself a few times – with varying answers throughout Jon Hickey’s Big Chief.  There are riots, family drama, a little romance and lots of politics.  Mitch Caddo is a political fixer for his friend, Mack Beck.  The title works on a couple levels, but when we meet Mack, he’s getting out of a massive bulletproof tricked-out pickup truck with the aforementioned name.  The title also alludes to questions of identity.  Mitch has lived away from the reservation for some time while getting his law degree, and he wants to support the nation but struggles with figuring out his place in this society.  Complicating things is Layla Beck – Mitch’s childhood friend and former love interest.  Layla works for Gloria Hawkins, who’s running against Mack in the upcoming election for Tribal President.  Layla and Mack were raised by a well-meaning white family, so yes, things get sticky to say the least.  

While Mitch has inured himself to a lot of past trauma, the ghosts of both his mother and adoptive father, Joe, are never far away.  In the following passage, Mitch is being gently lectured by a well-meaning elder and is reminded of his mother: 

“The voice of self-reproach sounds an awful lot like her voice.  Sometimes it feels like I can’t miss her, because her spirit, lost in the woods, follows me everywhere I go, giving me that kind of motherly love that tells me that I’m doing something wrong, that I’ve lost my way like she has, that I’m just as much of a ghost as she is.  Or I might as well be.”

Hickey’s writing is promising – while he manages to pack a lot into the book, it is mostly done with a deft hand.  My only quibble is overuse of the word “ursine” to describe the out-sized Mack and a few other vocabulary choices.  However, any questionable stylistic choices are more than made up for by the unforgettable characters and propulsive plot of this promising new literary voice.