Big Chief

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2025 by The Washington Post, Debutiful, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, and LitHub
Publishers Weekly Writer to Watch for Spring 2025

"A blistering work." New York Magazine

"A big-minded book about small-town politics." Kirkus (starred review)

"Hickey's polished debut novel takes place in a few fraught days preceding an election at the fictional Passage Rouge Indian Reservation in northern Wisconsin...At its heart, 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." Booklist

There, There meets The Night Watchman in this gripping literary debut about power and corruption, family, and facing the ghosts of the past.

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. As relationships strain to their breaking points and a peaceful protest threatens to become an all-consuming riot, Mitch and Layla must work together to stop the reservation’s descent into violence.

Thrilling and timely, Big Chief is an unforgettable story about the search for belonging—to an ancestral and spiritual home, to a family, and to a sovereign people at a moment of great historical importance.