Mitch Caddo, a young law school graduate and aspiring political fixer, is an outsider in the homeland of his Anishinaabe ancestors. But alongside his childhood friend, Tribal President Mack Beck, he runs the government of the Passage Rouge Nation, and with it, the tribe’s Golden Eagle Casino and Hotel. On the eve of Mack’s reelection, their tenuous grip on power is threatened by a nationally known activist and politician, Gloria Hawkins, and her young aide, Layla Beck, none other than Mack’s estranged sister and Mitch’s former love. In their struggle for control over Passage Rouge, the campaigns resort to bare-knuckle political gamesmanship, testing the limits of how far they will go—and what they will sacrifice—to win it all. But when an accident claims the life of Mitch’s mentor, a power broker in the reservation’s political scene, the election slides into chaos and pits Mitch against the only family he has.
What Jon Hickey has created with Big Chief is a masterclass on identity and what it feels like to be at peace within our skin. There is power in those actions ... A dazzling, fast-paced pressure-cooker journey about not letting others define who we are, but rather deciding that for ourselves.
Polished ... This is a novel about the difficulties of belonging to a family or a community while plagued by an unsettled conscience and about the ways in which ambition and power can have drastic results on any playing field.
