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.
“Tyson Stewart's excellent first novel, The Return of the Nish, is a surprising tale, of good and bad, of sons and fathers, of what is the right path and what path to avoid. Smoothly written, it covers two generations of Anishnaabe men, and everything that entails. I found myself leaning forward as I read, anticipating what was going to happen next.”
– Drew Hayden Taylor, winner of the PMC Indigenous Literature Award for Chasing Painted Horses
“Steadfast and sure-footed, Tyson Stewart’s The Return of the Nish is a heart-forward story of identity, reconnection, and the things we sacrifice in order to find ourselves.”
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“The Return of the Nish is both redemptive and realistic in its portrayal of fathers, sons, and breaking patterns before they break you.”
– Novels Alive
“This is a debut novel for Tyson Stewart and the feeling of the story being real sets this one just a shelf higher than many books, and makes this reader wonder what he will follow The Return of the Nish with.”
– Grasslands News
“The Return of the Nish is an emotionally charged debut that blends family drama with the pull of noir. … Tyson Stewart’s use of Anishinaabe identity gives the novel its deeper current. … This is a story about temptation, blood ties, and the painful hunger to understand where we come from, even when the answers are damaging. It’s intimate, and quietly haunting.”
– Murder in Common
“As an author, Tyson Stewart demonstrates an impressively genuine flair for the kind of character and narrative driven storytelling style that fully engages the reader from start to finish. A novel that will linger in the mind and memory of the reader long after the book has been finished and set back upon the shelf. Unreservedly recommended.”
– Midwest Book Review
