This Town Sleeps

This Town Sleeps is a novel by the American writer Dennis E. Staples, published in 2020. It is set on an Ojibwe reservation in northern Minnesota, and it moves between the ordinary life of the town and the things that the people in it have not dealt with.

Marion Lafournier is the man at the centre of it. He is gay and Ojibwe, and he is trying to find some meaning in a place he has never quite managed to leave. When he begins a relationship with a former classmate named Shannon, who is closeted, he finds himself dealing with a man who is volcanic and unstable.

The mystery begins with a dog. Roaming the dark streets of Geshig one night, Marion unknowingly brings to life the animal from underneath the playground of the elementary school, and the revenant leads him to the grave of Kayden Kelliher, a seventeen-year-old Ojibwe basketball star who was murdered.

Kayden is still remembered by the townspeople, and Marion sets out to find out what happened to him. In doing so he uncovers connections within his own family and an old Ojibwe legend that may be the key to the whole thing.