Bone Game

Description

In Bone Game| Louis Owens’s compelling new novel| dreams and waking life| past and present| ghosts and living people echo each other and lock in conflict. From the moment we read that a Spanish priest was murdered in 1812 and that the dismembered pieces of a young woman are beginning to wash ashore in 1993 – both in Santa Cruz – we know that something is profoundly wrong in the too-beautiful California town. Cole McCurtain is at Bone Game’s uneasy| dreaming center. Now a mixed-blood professor of Indian Studies at Santa Cruz| Cole is haunted by dreams of the murdered priest| a rearing grizzly bear| a black-and-white painted Indian who offers bones in his extended hands. In his waking life Cole moves through scenes equally discordant and sinister. Surrounded by decadent students| an overly earnest teaching assistant| and a cross-dressing| wisecracking Indian colleague| he longs to be back in New Mexico| fly-fishing. Help comes from Indian country when his beloved daughter Abby appears at his doorstep. Even so| the dreams become increasingly urgent and the murders ever more frequent. Added support is mobilized. Choctaw oldtimers – Cole’s father| Hoey| his great-uncle| Luther| and an old medicine woman| Onatima – travel west from Mississippi| becoming entangled in further stories along the way. They know they are needed; as Luther says| “This story’s so big| Cole sees only a little bit of it.”