Book Review: Old School Indian by Aaron John Curtis 5 millions stars

Sometimes a novel comes along that it so powerful, that it's hard to even talk about because, nothing I could write down could express anything coming close to the reading experience. 

Old School Indian falls into that realm for me. 

I saw this on the library's "new books shelf" and grabbed it, and checked it out on book club day.  Then I had to sit through Book Club (listening to a tepid discussion about a mediocre book written by  yet another mediocre writer) with this enticing cover just staring at me. The cover was done by Alex Jacobs and honestly, it really grabbed me.   Go check out his website because it's... really really enjoyable, stunning and just sort of surprising. Kind of wonderful in the age of those weird AI covers. 

So, this gorgeous novel rode around in my car for 3 weeks.  I didn't start it, didn't look at it much more and returned it to avoid a library fine.  I honestly- had started to have a lot of vision issues and reading actual text wasn't that appealing or easy.  I wanted to read that book, but, if wants were...

(Bear with me as this relates to the book.) 

I saw the novel again as an audio book from the library and checked it out. When I started the read/listen I was immediately pulled in and could not stop reading. 

So- as you know, I dislike spoilers. So  let's try to do a spoiler free "summary"!

 Our Main Man Abe is a Mohawk Indian. Raised on the reservation, he attended Syracuse University, met the love of his life and embarked on a life the seems deep and full and yet also not entirely of his own making. It seems he's always on the outskirts of the life he's made. He's enjoying himself, but he's mostly deriving happiness from making others happy. Eventually settling in Miami (maybe the most non-rez place I can think of in my limited experience), he is diagnosed with a rare, incurable, untreatable auto-immune disease.  This sets him up perfectly for a midlife "crisis" and coming of midlife age experience. In a rare move, Abe returns to the reservation, and considers his options. With themes of family, illness, identity, generational trauma, grief and loss, this one hit really close to home for me. The observations of auto-immune illnesses (really any chronic disease that's not well understood) and their effects on people, their relationships and life choices ( what it takes from a person, and what it might give to a person) just was so spot on and relatable that I did actually possibly, shed a tear or maybe two out of my incredibly dry auto-immune diseased eyeballs. 

If you want to know what happens to Abe - you obviously have to read the novel, because I really really refuse to spoil this one for anyone. Though I will say - it had maybe the MOST SATISFYING CONCLUSION of a novel for this entire year.  (after having read 120 or so books this year that's saying a lot).  It is so well put together, with beautiful tight writing, and surprisingly well paced that I think it's a must for anyone who's into reading current fiction, not just folks with auto-immune issues.  Every time I felt like I had a handle on "this is where this is going", I did not have a handle on it. I enjoyed being gently surprised all the way through! 

So anyway, fast forward back to my eyeballs.  What I thought was just my vision changing turns out to be an auto-immune issue to add to the Graves Disease which I already have. My eye doc was able to help me with a lot of ways to treat it and it may be getting a bit better, but my left eye may just always be like looking through a waterfall due to some deep corneal damage.  So reading this while going through that diagnosis period was kind of intense. I am extremely grateful it was available on audio as I would still be reading it in the print version. 

 This was a debut novel for Aaron John Curtis and I really really hope he has more work to share. 

STATS

First Published : May 2025

Pages: 416

Available as an Audio Book :YES 

Trigger Warnings: death, drug use, alcohol, open marriage/cheating, chronic illness, medical situations, injury.    As always this is likely not a complete list, so please read responsibly.