The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Talty, Morgan. Night of the Living Rez. Tin House Books, 2022.

Talty’s debut collection is divided into twelve stories and told by two narrators, David and Dee. The timelines of these various stories are not necessarily linear, and the question of whether David and Dee are the same person is not one that the collection answers, though there are significant reasons to believe that they are one and the same, with the narrator going by “David” as a child and “Dee” as an adult. Both characters, at the very least, struggle with poverty and drug addiction as they navigate their difficult lives on the Penobscot reservation in the state of Maine. The stories told from David’s perspective largely focus on the lives of David, his sister Paige, his mother (whom he calls Mom), and her boyfriend Frick. “In a Jar” details the circumstances of their arrival at the house; while playing with some action figures, David discovers a jar of corn, hair, and teeth under the steps of the house that Mom and Frick immediately identify as a bad omen. Frick cleanses the house and provides David and Mom with medicine pouches made of deer-hide that David is initially skeptical of. Eventually, Paige comes to live with them, and Mom is angry to discover that Paige is pregnant. David and Paige frequently visit Grammy, Mom’s mother, a spry but aging woman who warns them about ancient spirits and occasionally takes them to church. Eventually, Paige loses her child, and David offers to let her bury it in his toybox. “Food for the Common Cold” sees tensions spring up between Mom and Frick when Mom reveals that she cannot have children. As the story progresses, however, Mom and Frick are able to open up about past experiences that have traumatized them. Frick relays the story of his daughter, who died in a car accident as a result of the carelessness of a white visitor to the reservation that Frick was supposed to take on a hunting trip.

Mom, meanwhile, reveals that David was born along with a twin that turned out to be a cancerous tumor, and that she can no longer become pregnant as a result. In “The Blessing Tobacco,” David is tasked with caring for Grammy as her dementia begins to progress to such a point that she believes David is her brother Robbie, who died when Grammy was young. Grammy accuses David of stealing the family’s blessing tobacco, and as punishment she keeps offering David cigarettes, which he smokes because Mom told him to play along with Grammy. David develops a nicotine addiction, and Grammy is institutionalized after she crashes her car in an attempt to find Robbie. In “Smokes Last,” David has grown somewhat, and has begun to play violent games in the woods with his friends Tyson and JP. Mom is frustrated by David’s behavior and increasingly picks fights with Paige, who has begun to work at a local pawn shop off the reservation. After David and Tyson break the windows of a local bar as retribution for the racist comments of the patrons there, Mom acquiesces and buys David a pack of cigarettes. In “Night of the Living Rez,” David returns from a vacation at Dad’s to find that Paige has become obsessed with zombies and sunk further into alcoholism while Frick has lost his grip on reality. JP and Tyson enlist him to go and see a pugwagee, a mythical being, in the woods. Eventually, David returns home to find Frick attempting to force himself on Paige. After David distracts Frick, Paige hits him over the head with a fire poker. In “The Name Means Thunder,” an elderly David reflects on an event from his childhood at an indeterminate chronological point during which Paige becomes pregnant and gives birth to a child whom Frick names Bedogi. One day, through a series of events, David is left home alone to care for the baby and Paige’s case worker, Marla, comes to check on them. David feeds Bedogi too much formula in an attempt to keep him quiet and hide them from Marla, and Bedogi dies. Dee’s stories focus on his relationship with his best friend, Fellis, and his developing drug addiction. In “Burn,” Dee finds Fellis stuck to the ice of the reservation’s river and helps him get home. In “Get Me Some Medicine,” Fellis harbors resentment against a Native man named Meekew whom he believes ripped him off once, and Dee accompanies Fellis into town to help Fellis find and beat Meekew.

“In a Field of Stray Caterpillars” sees Fellis and Dee run a number of errands while confronted with the stench of thousands of rotting caterpillar corpses that have been crushed by cars on the bridge to the reservation. Dee also cuts things off with his white girlfriend, Tabitha, after she is rejected by members of the reservation. In “Safe Harbor,” Dee visits his mother in a crisis stabilization unit and is driven to a panic when she has a seizure in front of him. In “Half-Life,” Dee pays a visit to his grandmother in her nursing home and tries to cut off his drug habit after feeling guilty because of the conversation they have. He fails, however, and instead ends up stealing money from his grandmother’s house and purchasing drugs from Meekew. Finally, in “Earth, Speak,” Fellis proposes that he and Dee steal several root clubs from the tribal museum to sell them at a profit. After Fellis savagely beats a man named Daryl, Dee decides not to participate. Fellis is caught by the police, but Dee escapes as he recovers from methadone withdrawal at his mother’s house.