by Aaron John Curtis
Zando-Hillman Grad Books
5/6/2025, hardcover
SKU: 9781638931454
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.
Reviews:
"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
"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
"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
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.