The Return of the Nish

A bold new voice in Indigenous fiction, Tyson Stewart’s debut novel explores precarity, loss, and missed chances amid a northern Anishinaabe community.

In Tyson Stewart’s propulsive debut novel, a troubled young pilot seeks to reconnect with his Anishinaabe relatives — including his long-absent, nefarious father, who proposes a dangerous but lucrative business venture that’ll test both their limits.

As I watched my father stand in court, guilty and alone, I realized I was seeing him as a man for the first time.

Gerry Smith grew up fifty-five kilometres from Temagami, the hometown of his long-absent father, Dale King, but he didn’t know the once-legendary hockey player. Even after Gerry, as an adult, reconnects with the Anishinaabe relatives on his dad’s side of the family, Dale remains a mystery — a missing puzzle piece.

It’s not until Gerry’s in his late twenties, struggling with divorce and debts, raising a young son of his own, that Dale finally drops back into his life. In a sports bar in Toronto, Dale pitches a lucrative but illicit business venture, setting in motion an unlikely partnership that will test how far both father and son will go in the name of family. As Gerry tries to make sense of the man behind the myth, he soon realizes that all he thought he knew about his father — and about himself — is only a fraction of the whole story.

In this propulsive debut novel that draws on both Anishinaabe storytelling and film noir influences, The Return of the Nish explores the tragedy of lost opportunities, the cyclical nature of time, and how people and places return to us in new lights.