If all stories can be boiled down to a limited number of archetypal plot points, then the novel’s true genius lies in its talent for potentially telling the same old story in a way that makes you feel like you’re hearing it for the first time.
In his debut novel, The Return of Nisha, author Tyson Stewart, assistant professor of Indigenous studies at Nipissing University in Thunder Bay, wastes no time confronting us with myth in this complex tale of reckoning between father and son. The father in this case may not be the Saturn depicted in Goya’s arresting Saturn Devouring His Son, but he is not above sinking his teeth into naked flesh and drawing blood.
Return of Niš
Tyson Stewart
Cormorant
The first chapter is equal parts, beginning and ending with 27-year-old Jerry Smith sitting in a courtroom and watching his shocked father cry as he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Dale King may be guilty, but it is Jerry who feels guilty for turning him in and testifying against him.
“What kind of son am I?” – he asks himself, knowing that Dale would never think of such a question: “What kind of father am I?”
His bitter, unusual, criminal experience with his father abandoning him in his mother’s womb sends Jerry, the blond, freckled narrator and protagonist of the novel, on a harrowing journey of self-discovery that achieves a fuller universal expression when viewed through the powerful lens of the Anishinaabemowin word, Bisqaabian, or “return to self.”
Sensitive but introverted, the product of a teenage pregnancy, Jerry, raised in New Liskeard, near Temagami, by his mother Amy Smith and her parents, knows Dale, a star athlete, only by reputation – the locals’ admiration for his athleticism is combined with Amy’s simmering resentment for the energetic boy she loved who didn’t love her back.
It’s not until he’s an adult, a pilot, a husband and the father of a little boy, that Jerry meets his father’s Anishinaabe family, who are kind and hospitable, even though Dale, with his hockey career behind him, refuses to meet him – until he finds himself in a bind and realizes that his son’s ability to fly a plane is a very valuable resource for a man who “travels” for a living.
As the novel progresses, it becomes apparent that father and son lead mirror lives, marred by imperfection, lack of roots, and careless choices. Both men are flawed and succumb to life-altering temptations, but while the father enjoys the ensuing chaos and destruction of things, the son yearns for restoration and reconciliation. Jerry not only deals with the consequences of an absent father, he tries to fill the emptiness within himself.
Reconnecting with his Anishinaabe heritage fills his journey with spiritual longing. It’s an understated, lowercase transformation he undergoes, especially compared to the near-hysterical swagger that accompanies Dale, who treats life as if it were one long, amoral binge.
There’s so much to love about how Stewart chose to tell this story – especially for a first-time writer, he makes fearless and even daring choices that speak to his commitment to telling the story he wants to tell, the way he wants to tell it.
Taking advantage of the aesthetic of film noir, its characteristic unsentimental sharpness and lack of decibel-lowering luxury, Stewart treats blank pages like blank canvases, painting them in black and white colors and shadows, using a matte finish to reduce glare and eliminate gloss.
The use of simple, unadorned language and dialogue as atmosphere builds unexpected power until it becomes a minimalist chant that helps elevate the banality to poignant levels while simultaneously making room for whatever rumbles unspoken beneath the surface.
Non-linear, the chronology is defined by key moments, stories defining characters, unfolding within stories, traditional Anishaabe storytelling a low insistent hum in the background.
Then there’s Jerry, the omniscient first-person narrator who acts as an arrogant ghostwriter, offering first-hand information about conversations and events in his father’s life that he wasn’t privy to. It is only later in the novel that we realize that the son who knows nothing seems to know everything. Jerry wants to find out the truth about Dale, and his quest brings the estranged lives of father and son together in a way that eluded them in reality.
By telling Dale’s story in detail, Jerry understands his own story better. And it seems true what Jerry says about it. I think we trust Jerry because the author believes in him, relies on him to provide a reliable witness, and so do we. This is what happens when you know your characters well enough to let them play the leading role. By giving Jerry the opportunity to shape the narrative, to tell both what he intuitively knows and what he has been told, Stuart also gives him the resources to finally return home.