Jonis Agee packs several types of books into her 2016 novel, The Bones of Paradise. She combines a fairly violent, rough-and-tumble American Frontier piece with a murder mystery, a very subtle romance, and a saga that captures the flow and change of American history at an epochal moment as it affects the lives of its citizen-actors. The whole is an outstanding effort, succeeding at nearly all genres and historical epochs.

At the novel’s outset, J. B. Bennett has made a monentous decision and is in a grim, pensive mood as he rides from his ranch to his father’s adjoining spread. Something his estranged wife, Dulcinea, has written has convinced him to try to get closure on a grievous wrong he did her years ago. He pauses in his way when he discovers a young Lakota woman dead and half buried on his land. He dismounts to investigate and is shot and killed by a nearby mystery man with a rifle.

All the principal characters take it upon themselves to establish who did the deed; the one thing they all agree on is that the dentist-undertaker the town has elected sheriff is not equal to the task. And the principal characters are perhaps the main asset of this novel. They include Drum, J. B.’s choleric, embittered, thoroughly unsocial father, who has a past littered with dead bodies. The main protagonist is Dulcinea, who has returned to her (now dead) husband’s ranch with an olive leaf of sorts, to find that it’s a matter of days too late. There are Dulcinea’s two brutish, near-adult sons, who promise no good, and Rose, a Lakota woman whose sister was the original murder victim.

But even the highly vivid and diverting cast of characters takes a back seat to Agee’s style. Simple, direct to the point of laconicism, it reflects the time and place and characters perfectly. The Sand Hills of Nebraska in 1900 are not the place for sophisticated speech. The dialogue and indeed, the expository passages, fit perfectly into the social and cultural milieu. People hard-pressed to wring a living out of bad ground, bad weather, and a murderous government (refer to the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee), stick doggedly to the issues at hand. You can always tell where you stand with this cast of characters.

The plotting of this story isn’t as accomplished. Events fit, at least, but I don’t think I’d be alone in my lingering befuddlement over the murders of Star, the Lakota woman, and J. B. (I suspect this is because I’ve always been slow on the uptake of key clues in mysteries, even after all is revealed.) Particularly frightening characters turn out to be innocent, at least of the main crime, but we learn this only after one such character has met a sudden and untimely end himself. Another, whom we are led to suspect though most of the book, has a series of nefarious acts attributed to him, but even when we get partial enlightenment on his motivation, I for one had a hard time accepting it.

On balance I’m recommending this book. It’s a vivid tome, full of human striving and moments of success in the sea of failure, and realistic depictions of Frontier culture and prejudices. The retrospective narrative of the massacre at Wounded Knee, carried on at different times in the book in the points of view of different characters, is exceptional, and in itself constitutes a principal reason to read the novel. Another grand reward: the technical mastery displayed by this ambitious author as she weaves together her multiple motifs, or genres, which all contribute to the highly accomplished whole. They work very nearly seamlessly together, and give the reader a very memorable ride.

https://bassoprofundo1.blogspot.com/2022/09/the-bones-of-paradise-by-jonis-agee.... ( )

I enjoyed the historical aspects of this book and found some of the writing poetic and beautiful. Engaging characters and the setting is a character in itself. However, there were several times where the story seemed to veer off to a random conversation or idea right in the middle of a fairly involved passage. More than one time I checked to see if I had skipped a page because the flow seemed off and confused me. This is an ARC I've had for awhile and the first book I have read from this author, I did enjoy her writing enough to read another one of her books. ( )

Novel set in Nebraska, that I should like but I don't. Tale of the twin deaths of a rancher and a young Native American woman, and the long-absent wife trying to solve the crime. Many ties to Wounded Knee, and early Nebraska history.
Author uses wayyyyyyyyyy to many pronouns, making it hard to follow conversations. ( )

Ten years after the Seventh Cavalry massacred more than two hundred Lakota men, women and children at Wounded Knee, JB Bennett, a white rancher, and Star, a young Native woman, are murdered in a remote meadow on JB's land. The deaths bring together the scattered members of JB's family: his cunning and hard father, Drum; his estranged wife, Dulcinea; and teenage young sons, Cullen and Hayward. As the mystery of these twin deaths unfolds, the history of the dysfunctional Bennetts and their damning secrets is revealed - exposing the conflicted heart of a nation caught between past and future. ( )

Birds call to their mates across the sandy plains. A multicolored cloud of butterflies wings its way across the grassy landscape. Astride a horse, a mysterious man finds the body of an Indian woman and her child in a shallow grave in the shadow of a windmill. Gunshots erupt across the expanse, and the man is killed.
With [The Bones of Paradise], Jonis Agee establishes herself as one of the most underappreciated writers of our time. Her delicate descriptions, echoing the tones and colors and sounds of the place where the story is rooted, are so poetic that it’s hard to believe you’re reading a western, complete with gun play and violence. She is a wordsmith equal to the great poets. Here is her description of one of the minor characters:

“Pushing the strand of damp hair off her forehead, she gave Grave a quick smile and tilted her head. Her eyes had a touch of green like the water I hay meadows. Sometimes, when she was angry, a dark cast appeared like the morning sky before rain. She was a handsome woman with light tortoiseshell skin that shone in the new summer light.”

Her skill with words is matched in her story creation. [The Bones of Paradise] is a family saga, rich in plain’s history and western sensibility. You’ll taste the dust in the air as her characters sift through the vengeance and greed that rules their lives. You’ll smell the blood in the air as the cavalry massacre the innocent at Wounded Knee. And the overripe plains sun will illuminate the spidery threads woven from these events into their lives.

In her main characters, Dulcinea and Rose, she’s created women to rival any cowboy. At the end, in the wake of her husband’s death, her son’s death, and attempts to swindle her out of her land, she ponders how to proceed with her life –

“Her faith had removed God, dispersed him like seed or gravel. It was not that God didn’t exist. It was that he wasn’t alone, but in pieces, parts, always whole, sufficient, always multiple. So like the ancient Greeks she trod lightly, carefully, tried to give no offense to the land, the sacred grass her feet crushed, the ants hurriedly preparing caverns for the winter, pushing tiny yellow boulders out of a hole the size of a bee’s leg. Oh the offense, to walk so clumsily through the world, to crush and bring havoc, that they couldn’t help. But to give no recognition to the cost of their being alive, to the price paid for their dreams by everything else?

Bottom Line: A lyrical and poetic book that will make you forget you’re reading a western. Agee is easily one of the most underappreciated writers of our time.

5 bones!!!!!