Old School Indian: A Novel

by Aaron John Curtis

Overview

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • INDIE NEXT PICK

"[An] entrancing new voice . . . Aaron John Curtis will be your new literary obsession." —Marion Winik, The Boston Globe

"An inspired novel by an author whose voice absolutely sizzles on the page.” ―Nathan Hill, author of Wellness and The Nix

“With amazing dexterity, Aaron John Curtis’s moving debut novel combines raucous humor with respect for ancestral traditions.” ―Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, author of The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

“Chock-full of humor and grief, packed with intriguing family lore, and written with a tremendous amount of heart.”―Kristen Arnett,  author of Mostly Dead Things

There There meets All Fours in this irreverent coming-of-middle-age story about an Indigenous man’s hunger for intimacy, healing, and a second chance.

Abe Jacobs is Kanien’kehá:ka from Ahkwesáhsne―or, as white people say, a Mohawk Indian from the Saint Regis Tribe. At eighteen, Abe left the reservation where he was raised and never looked back. He met the love of his life, started writing poetry, and began an open marriage.

Now at forty-three, Abe is suffering from a rare disease―one his doctors in Miami believe will kill him. Running from his diagnosis and a marriage teetering on collapse, Abe returns to the Rez, where he’s persuaded to undergo a healing at the hands of his Great Uncle Budge. But Budge―a wry, recovered alcoholic prone to wearing punk T-shirts―isn’t all that convincing. And Abe’s time off the Rez has made him a thorough skeptic.

To heal, Abe will undertake a revelatory journey, confronting the parts of himself he’s hidden ever since he left home and wrestling with the imprint left by his once-passionate marriage.

Delivered with crackling wit and heart-wrenching tenderness, Old School Indian is a striking exploration of the power and secrets of family, the capacity for healing and intimacy, and the ripple effects of history and culture.

"A novel of pure heart and mastery.” ―Morgan Talty, bestselling author of Night of the Living Rez and Fire Exit

A Kirkus Editor’s Pick • A Most Anticipated Book of 2025: Cowboys & Indians | Brit + Co | Debutiful

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781638931454
Publisher:	Zando
Publication date:	05/06/2025
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Aaron John Curtis is an enrolled member of the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe, which he'll tell you is the white name for the American side of Akwesasne. Aaron has judged for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance prizes, the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, and the 2021 National Book Award for Nonfiction. Since 2004, Aaron has been Quartermaster at Books & Books, Miami’s largest independent bookstore. He lives in Miami.

Editorial Reviews

"[An] entrancing new voice . . . Aaron John Curtis will be your new literary obsession." —Marion Winik, The Boston Globe

“With amazing dexterity, Aaron John Curtis’s moving debut novel, Old School Indian, combines raucous humor with respect for ancestral traditions, revealing that home is not only where a heart resides. Home is a place in our spirits, in our histories, in our memories—home is a longing that never leaves us.” —Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, New York Times bestselling author of The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

“Old School Indian is an inspired novel by an author whose voice absolutely sizzles on the page. Aaron John Curtis has given us a moving story of self-discovery that journeys through the crucibles of sickness, history, identity, family, and loss—all told by one of the most inventive, funny, brash narrators you’ll ever find. A beautiful, dazzling debut.” ―Nathan Hill, New York Times bestselling author of Wellness and The Nix

“Electrifying. . . . This astonishes.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“An affecting tale of loss and healing that thrives through its seriocomic style.” —Kirkus, starred review

“With its profound exploration of identity, language, and cultural survival, Old School Indian commands attention. Through the vivid and deeply human lives of a Mohawk family, Curtis weaves a narrative that insists we listen closely and engage deeply. The characters, grounded in both tradition and the challenges of modernity, speak with a voice that is both urgent and timeless, drawing us into a world where every word, every action, carries the weight of history and the hope for the future. Curtis strikingly balances humor and gravity, creating a story that forces us to confront our assumptions, demands to be heard, and ultimately reminds us of the enduring, sacred power of storytelling. Old School Indian joins the ranks of the finest fiction written by Indigenous peoples, past and present. This is a novel of pure heart and mastery.” ―Morgan Talty, national bestselling author of Night of the Living Rez and Fire Exit

“Exceptional... bestows meaning, power, and humor.” —BookPage, starred review

“[A] sharply comic and touching debut.”—Booklist, starred review

“Aaron John Curtis's audacious debut is not just a novel. It is personal and collective history dancing on the page to wake us to the world around us. By examining the colonization of a body and a people, Old School Indian addresses our festering wound of a need to heal, challenging us to use memory as a remedy and our purpose as a cure. You'll laugh, you'll think, you may even shed a few tears and sit in wonder at the ingenuity and sheer balls of this work and author. An instant classic that will continue to beat in readers' hearts for generations.” —Mateo Askaripour, New York Times bestselling author of Black Buck and This Great Hemisphere

“Aaron John Curtis gives us honest storytelling shaped by humor, sincerity, and heartbreak. His characters are drawn with strength from his Indigenous community and skillfully cured by tradition and hope. Old School Indian is a novel that reminds us of an essential truth: When one person heals, the entire community can feel it.”—Oscar Hokeah, PEN/Hemingway Award-winning author of Calling for a Blanket Dance

“This is my favorite kind of storytelling: chock-full of humor and grief, packed with intriguing family lore, and written with a tremendous amount of heart. Aaron John Curtis has crafted something powerfully complex here; a novel that invites you to sit down, take a beat, and share space. This book is a feast for the senses—it’s an incredible meal you’ll want to share with your friends. Old School Indian is exceptional.” —Kristen Arnett, New York Times bestselling author of Mostly Dead Things

“Curtis’ debut novel holds the power to open eyes to who Indigenous people truly are. Brave, funny and irreverent, Old School Indian reveals what separates us from each other—but also from ourselves. As Abe endures the painful internalized racism that comes from filtering who he is through what the world says about him, his journey indicts all the relationships that ask us to filter who we are through narratives of oppression. And at its heart, this is a story about what it means to practice care.” —Chelsea T. Hicks, author of A Calm and Normal Heart and National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree

“Bold, smart, and bighearted, Old School Indian tells a new kind of story about ancient wounds. This big, ambitious novel goes straight to the heart of things, uncovering emotional truths embedded in unseen personal and indigenous histories. A wonderful, potent read.” —Diana Abu-Jaber, author of Fencing with the King

“Reading this book was cold water on a summer day. Aaron John Curtis descends into the divided self to bring forth a hilarious, profound and unsentimentally wise story of a Mohawk family and one son’s search for relief that transcends the physical. A gorgeous exploration of the restorative bonds of kin, the wages of history, and the stories that break and remake us.” —Ana Menéndez, Pushcart Prize-winning author of The Apartment

“A coming-of-middle-age story that is bound to restore your faith in healing and exacerbate your mid-life crisis just a tad.” —Caroline Cabe, Cowboys & Indians

“A piercing, warm, and witty book that bears witness to the protest of existing and to the right to remake and reimagine our own myths.”―Lena Waithe, Rishi Rajani, and Naomi Funabashi, Hillman Grad Books

From the Publisher

★ 2025-02-01
A Native American man returns home to heal wounds both literal and metaphorical.

Abe Jacobs, the hero of Curtis’ finely tuned debut, is 43 and seriously ill. He’s taken a break from his job as a bookseller in Miami (and from his wife, Alexandria East), to visit family on a Mohawk reservation in upstate New York. He’s suffering from chronic fatigue and lesions on his legs that baffle his doctors; while he waits for a formal diagnosis, he skeptically but desperately accepts some folk treatment from a great-uncle. Otherwise, he spends his stay reconnecting with friends and family, attempting to make sense of his various past struggles: a depression that led to a suicide attempt, a difficult open relationship with Alex, and a stalled career as a poet. That last challenge gives the novel a poignant, lyrical lift: An alter ego of Abe’s, Dominick Deer Woods, regularly intrudes on the narrative, sharing excerpts of Abe’s poetry and generally serving as his snarkier, more confident self. (“Abe? He’s just the guy with the rotting skin who panicked and fled his wife, friends, and job in Miami. Why should he need to know what’s going on? It’s just his sanity.”) Some of those sidebars deal with Native American life, from food to tribal relationships, to the bigotry that informs Abe’s skepticism of traditional medicine, to forced sterilizations, and more. A formal diagnosis, when it finally arrives, pushes the narrative into a deeper, more soulful, and in some ways more surprising territory. Thematically, the novel contains echoes of Leslie Marmon Silko’s classicCeremony (1977), which also dealt with themes of trauma and Indigenous paths to healing. But Curtis’ voice is his own, and its ending, while a left turn, feels wholly earned.

An affecting tale of loss and healing that thrives through its seriocomic style.

Kirkus Reviews