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High Hawk

What are the boundaries of complicity? To whom does the church “confess” its sins? How does it atone for harm inflicted? Author Amy Frykholm explores these questions in her new book of fiction.

Amy Frykholm
University of Iowa Press, 242 pages
Publishing October 8, 2024

High Hawk is the story of Father Joe, an avuncular priest at St. Rose Catholic Church who serves Windy Creek Reservation. “Banished” to this isolated corner of South Dakota after expressing mild concern about the behavior of his fellow priests, he builds a quiet life, leading a speedy daily mass and losing himself in the parsing of biblical Hebrew in the afternoons.

When a baby is abandoned on the church steps, Alice Nighthawk, Father Joe’s friend and connection to the reservation takes him in, raising “Bear” as her own. Years later, Alice’s older son is murdered outside a bar and Bear is accused of attempting to kill a man who witnessed the brawl. If they are to keep Bear out of the federal courts, Father Joe and Alice need to prove he is “one of theirs”; the search for Bear’s mom reveals ugly truths about the church and the climate of secrecy that likely led to her pregnancy and subsequent choices. At the same time, a woman from Joe’s past reaches out, and their conversations challenge his choices and understanding of vocation.

Amy Frykholm offers a satisfying mystery as she connects Bear’s puzzles with the secrets of the Catholic Church. By centering Father Joe as the affable (yet ineffectual) investigator, we are privy to his interior thoughts. He is the local secret keeper, receiving his congregation’s confessions and responding with the appropriate language. “But what (seminary doesn’t) tell you is what to do with the accumulation of things you know, things that no one else knows, and how that piles up,” he muses. As Joe replays conversations with former superiors and relives old questions about the behavior of his fellow priests, we wonder what he has done … and what he has left undone?

Frykholm explores universal themes in less familiar territory: Belonging. Justice. Vocation. Family. Why do humans create an “other”? Must there be two “sides”? How do institutions perpetuate evil? What are the boundaries of complicity? To whom does the church “confess” its sins? How does it atone for harm inflicted? High Hawk weaves these compelling themes through a narrative that is, at its core, about loneliness and love, the belonging of family and chosen family, and the grace of God that weaves it all together.

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