For a long time, author Eric Gansworth wanted to write a novel about Brian, a reservation kid who finds himself straddling two worlds, two cultures, and two careers. But he couldn’t quite figure out how to do it.

“I kept putting him in the background of other novels until I could figure out how to tell his story,” says Gansworth, who is the author of the young adult novels If I Ever Get Out of Here and Give Me Some Truth as well as poetry collections, adult novels, essays, plays, and the YA memoir Apple (Skin to the Core). “The reality is, the very first novel I tried to write was a version of his story. But it was terrible.”

A visual artist and a professor of English and creative writing at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, the multifaceted Gansworth sets his stories on the Tuscarora reservation in western New York (he’s an enrolled Onandaga tribal member). His characters can easily cross each other’s paths, so giving the adult Brian cameo appearances was a good strategy until a worthy story presented itself.

The waiting paid off. My Good Man (Levine Querido, Nov. 1) is Brian’s coming-of-age story, and it’s a funny, moving book. Gansworth explores Brian’s struggles between loyalty to his family and his Indigenous community and his desire for a job to escape grinding poverty (Gansworth calls this high-wire act “staying balanced between two canoes”). At odds are Brian’s legacy as a tribal healer versus a career as a reporter at the Niagara Cascade newspaper, which means estrangement from friends and family when he has to write about them.

When Tim Sampson, an old friend, is found beaten on the reservation, Brian is assigned the story. But he knows there is more to the attack than his editor suspects. Tim is a White man who married an Indigenous woman and lived on the reservation after her death. The crime leads Brian to revisit his childhood and adolescence and to consider his choices.

Though My Good Man is aimed at a young adult audience, it’s mostly set in the 1970s and 1980s, when Gansworth himself was growing up. Adult readers will appreciate its humor and nostalgia, especially fans of the Canadian band Rush, Brian’s favorite group (Gansworth’s, too).

Growing up on the Tuscarora reservation wasn’t always easy, but it provided Gansworth with a fertile background from which to shape stories.

“I definitely didn’t always have favorable experiences growing up,” he says. “But they were rich experiences for someone who was going to go on and be a writer and a painter.” We recently spoke with Gansworth about the novel over the phone from his home in Niagara Falls.

Did you ever work at a newspaper?

I never did personally, but I had a friend who did. We were English majors and had parallel careers, and I hung out with the student journalists. So I knew what their lives were like. This friend did get a version of Brian’s job, and he only stayed five years. It was so heartbreaking to him to go to a victim’s family and try to get a quote. I thought that was a really intense way of having to live in the world. The world of fiction writers is a little safer. I control who lives or dies.

As the book opens, Brian is the only Indigenous reporter in the newsroom, and he’s expected to be the voice of his community yet still report on it when, say, a cousin ends up in a police report. Did you ever see that happen?

I have forever read local newspapers, and so have my peers and family and friends. We’re all in our 40s and 50s, and that’s what people turned to first, the police blotter. What it means to have that job is getting bombarded from both sides, from the newsroom and from your people. I thought it would be a tough balance. Those of us who work in public, we’re always balancing that. And we become perceived as voices of the community, which is hard.

Why did you set the book in this time period?

I knew I wanted to have 1992 as the end date, for Brian to emerge exploring family responsibility and the idea of being a medicine person on the 500^th anniversary of the invasion of Columbus.

What appeals to you about writing from a young person’s perspective?

It reflects my worldview. My personal history is constantly informing my present. When I was 13, I was reading adult novels—I didn’t know there were young adult novels. But I thought there must be other kids like me who can see the richness of their own lives. I guess to be a writer for young people, you have to have kept that set of highways open. I don’t know if that happens naturally or you cultivate it.

Have you changed a lot since your own teenage years?

I am not super different to who I was at 15! Some of my contemporaries barely remember high school, which is shocking to me. My memory is pretty much intact. I still love music as much as I ever did, while most of my friends got to a point where concerts weren’t interesting to them anymore. For me, the toughest thing about the pandemic was the end of live music in my life.

Why do you set all your stories in the same universe?

I grew up as a Marvel kid, so as I started to write fiction, I made the decision that all my characters were going to live on the same reservation for my whole career. Louise Erdrich gave me the permission to do this. She wrote Love Medicine, and her career launch was a perfect augur for who I might become. Not that Louise and I are similar talents! She’s a supernova.

The relationship between Brian and Tim, his mentor, is special. What inspired it?

Tim is an amalgam of people in my life. I want my students to value their experience and work, but a lot of them don’t have a sense of community. It made me realize I had lived in this really unusual situation. There were probably 50 people contributing to my well being and influencing who I became as an adult. All these people made honest contributions to me, and you’d sometimes find one who would be that super honest person with you. Those were such rich moments for me; I wanted to capture them, to give hope to other people like me. You can find people who will nurture you.

Do you think more Indigenous stories are finding their ways to publication now, as opposed to when you first started writing?

I think there has been a tremendous shift in the last five years and new forces that have helped that shift. It’s encouraging. I wish these things were going on when I was a younger writer. I spent much of my early career writing for adults, and I was told point blank by editors: “We’ve already got our Indian.” Would they ever say, “We’ve got our one White writer?” There was one box, and they had filled it. But I think things are improving.

Connie Ogle is a writer in Florida.