Charles

Charles is the main character and first person narrator of the novel. Because Fire Exit is Charles’s story, his internal experience dictates the narrative’s action, tension, and stakes. In the narrative present, Charles is a middle-aged man living alone in a house he and his late stepfather Fredrick built years prior. The house is situated on the opposite side of the Penobscot River from the Indian Island Penobscot reservation. From his house, Charles can look out across the water and see his estranged lover Mary and estranged daughter Elizabeth’s house. Since he has stopped working, he has started spending all of his time studying their home, imagining the family he could have built with them, and meditating on the risks of telling Elizabeth the truth about who he is to her.

Charles grew up on the reservation with Fredrick and his mother Louise. Charles never...