The saying, “You can’t smell it from here,” is supposedly a famous comic’s retort after being asked to say something nice about New Jersey. But the phrase has also been uttered by many an editor or writing coach. It means get out from behind your desk, walk the streets, report with all five senses so readers know whereof you write.

Mattox Roesch’s debut novel Sometimes We’re Always Real Same-Same, describes life in a rural Alaska village with all five senses, in an way that will be recognizably authentic to anyone whose stepped onto a gravel runway and been greeted by smiling welcome party with a dusty Suburban for a courtesy car.

The book is a coming-of-age tale narrated by Cesar, a 17-year-old former gang member who moves from Los Angeles to Unalakleet with his mother, who hasn’t lived village life since she was a child. Missing from the family are Cesar’s older brother Wicho and their father. Wicho is in prison for life in California and Cesar’s father corresponds infrequently. Still, both men fuel a hope within Cesar that he can one day return to California. The modest plan is to work with his dad in a legitimate business venture. The more ambitious one is return to California, attend college and become a lawyer—better yet governor—and free Wicho. All the while, Cesar becomes more settled in Unalakleet.

Fish in the river and drying on racks, seal oil, two-cycle outboard gas and forest fire smoke that engulfs the town are among the things Cesar experiences for the first time in Alaska. He also meets more familiar sensations. There’s construction noise and sawdust. There’s demolition debris when the town’s old jail is torn down. Someone’s opened a pizza joint, a bold venture in a town with fewer than 800 people. Some villagers have problems with drinking. Some remind each other that people all over the word have problems with drinking.

Cesar’s guide throughout the story is Go-boy, a charming but oddball cousin who bets Cesar he’ll stay in the village for more than a year the day they meet on the airstrip. Roesch’s Unalakleet could be Anyvillage, Alaska, if not for Go-boy. This character, a charming, early-twenties manic-depressive who dropped out of bible college, steals many scenes in this novel. Go-boy sports an Eskimo Jesus tattoo and believes Unalakleet is the center of something big, a global happiness conspiracy he unwaveringly believes in—and evangelizes about—until a depressive state begins and counselors intervene.

Cesar’s story is rife with identity questions. To his credit, Roesch deftly avoids clichés such as “walks in two worlds” or passages about Cesar “reclaiming” his heritage. His mother is doing just that, but we see her self-fulfilling changes through Cesar’s eyes. He doesn’t want to idealize or chastise her for wanting to change. Cesar figures he’s just got a messed-up family with his mom, Go-boy and Kiana, a girl he slowly falls in love with who deftly keeps him at a distance.

When Cesar’s on a tower counting salmon as a summer job, he doesn’t know a Chinook from a chum and admits it himself. (Go-boy is of little help, emphasizing happiness over diligence on the job and costing both boys their summer job.) When Cesar figures out that low tide in Los Angeles can coincide with high tide in Unalakleet he tries in vain to explain that to his father over the telephone. Father claims the tides don’t work that way. Cesar seems disappointed in the man’s bull-headedness, but also in himself for not being able to explain his discovery.

There’s tension in the story as Cesar allows Go-boy to take the lead, all the while discovering that his leader might, in fact, be off his nut. There’s lots of back-and-forth between Cesar and his mother, and among the villagers, about whether or not Go-boy is crazy and whether they should intervene. Two tragedies in the village revolve around that sort of tension—when is intervention the right thing?—as does another tragedy from Cesar’s gang-banger past, one he is secretive about and regrets.

Go-boy has brief victories under the happiness conspiracy’s flag and Roesch documents them with Cesar’s attentive, non-judgmental narration. The day the old jailhouse is torn down is a one such victory. Readers might find themselves cheering as they experience the exhilaration of a crowd that decides mania—at least manic action with a symbolic purpose—isn’t always a dangerous state of being.

In Sometimes We’re Always Real Same-Same, Mattox Roesch gives us a version of rural Alaska that we can smell, feel, hear and see. It’s fresh and rare treat in that it avoids clichés. (Mountains don’t “loom over” everything in this novel and Alaska Natives don’t “walk in two worlds” the characters live where they happen to live.)

But Roesch’s deft scene setting is just the medium. Roesch shows readers small town victories and defeats, and that mixture of hope and fear inside a boy about to figure out what kind of man he is to become. As Cesar begins to know himself, he learns what it is to be part ugly and part beautiful. He also begins to take some responsibility for guiding Go-boy, a reversal of roles that feels natural given all that came before.

In the final passages Cesar seems to want to take the best lessons from his cousin’s evangelizing, and arrange his own adult worldview around them. He also seems to want to preserve them for Go-boy, so the prophet himself won’t forget how he once inspired a whole village. Those last short chapters are a bit discordant. They’re asynchronous and some of them attempt to resolve subplots that don’t necessarily require resolution. But by this point most readers will forgive Roesch: He will already have captivated them with all that transpired during Cesar’s first year in rural Alaska.