Morgan Talty has followed up on the success of his prize-winning story collection, “Night of the Living Rez,” with a poignant first novel that explores the charged question of what constitutes identity — family or tribe?

“Fire Exit” is narrated by a white man named Charles, who lives across the river from the Penobscot Nation in Maine. For years, he has watched from afar as Elizabeth, the child he fathered with a Native woman, grows up on the reservation with her mother, Mary, and her Native stepfather, Roger. He longs to tell her the truth about her paternity, but Mary insists on keeping it a secret.

Charles’ desire is driven in part by a history of mental illness in his family. When the novel opens, his mother, Louise, who has suffered for years from bouts of severe depression, is also exhibiting symptoms of dementia. She is at risk of losing any memory of their shared history as a family, a history that Charles wants Elizabeth to know.

The son of a white mother and father, Charles was raised on the reservation by Louise and her second husband, Fredrick, a Native man. But at age 18, he had to leave the reservation because of a tribal law that barred anyone who was not Native from living on the land. It was that same law that prompted Mary to tell him: “The baby can’t be yours.”

Charles, however, has little use for the complicated, controversial “blood quantum” rules that many tribes use to keep track of citizenship, which are based on the idea that the amount of “Indian blood” in an individual can be quantified. Despite his racial identity as a white man, he feels connected to the people and the land where he grew up.

The conflict between Mary and Charles comes to a head when Elizabeth, who has grown up to be a deeply troubled young woman, goes missing and Charles is enlisted to help find her during a nor’easter of epic proportions.

It is a gripping ending to a thoughtful, heartfelt exploration of what it means to be part of a family and a community. Is it a matter of blood, biology or simply the bonds of love? — Ann Levin, Associated Press

If you’re a John Grisham fan who was put off by last year’s disastrous sequel to “The Firm,” “The Exchange,” you might want to give him another chance.

The legal thriller maestro’s “Camino Ghosts” returns him to the genial characters from his “Camino Island” and “Camino Winds,” who all check in and out of a remarkably prosperous bookstore on the fictitious Camino Island.

Like the other “Camino” books, “Ghosts” is briefer and more light-hearted than Grisham’s straight-up legal thrillers — no one gets killed, or even seriously threatened, during the course of the new one.

The “Camino” books have felt like palate cleansers for Grisham, something fun to do before tackling the weightier issues that usually form the backbone of such books as “The Client” and “The Associate.” (The first “Camino Island” was a caper, touched off by the theft of an F. Scott Fitzgerald manuscript.)

“Ghosts” blends legal-thriller elements with the friendly bickering of the island’s residents. Bookstore owner Bruce Cable and his pals come to the assistance of a woman named Lovely Jackson, who is descended from enslaved people and is attempting to establish a claim on a now- deserted island, where her ancestors lived after they escaped from slavery.

As usual, Grisham has a few legal surprises to spring on us as the case unfolds, and his characters, while not particularly deep, are fun to hang out with.

Most importantly, the plotting instincts that deserted Grisham in “Exchange” are back in “Camino Ghosts.” The legal case may drag out over months, as actual legal cases do, but Grisham makes sure the book moves like the winds that buffet his fictional island. — Chris Hewitt, Minneapolis Star Tribune