The Bones of Paradise

Ten years after the Seventh Calvary massacred more than two hundred Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee, J. B. Bennett, a white rancher, and Star, a young Native woman, are murdered in a remote meadow on J.B.'s land. The deaths bring together the scattered members of J.B.'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.A kaleidoscopic portrait of misfits, schemers, chancers, and dreamers, Jonis Agee's bold new novel is a panorama of America at the dawn of a new century. A beautiful evocation of this magnificent, blood-soaked land?its sweeping prairies, seas of golden grass and sandy hills, all at the mercy of two unpredictable and terrifying forces, weather and lawlessness?and the durable men and women who dared to tame it.