Only Good Indians

My gateway book to Stephen Graham Jones' unique world began with My Heart Is A Chainsaw, which I loved. I mean, how could I not, as a former teenage horror buff who preferred movies to real life? The Only Good Indians actually preceded My Heart Is A Chainsaw IRL so this was long before Jade Daniels wished upon a star for calamity to befall her little Idaho town. Long before then, you see, there was a young elk mother pregnant with her calf. And four young Indians who weren't supposed to hunting in this part of the woods.

But they did anyway. On Thanksgiving, no less. What happens then to all the elk they shot when they're caught? They had to let them rot, as part of an agreement with the law. The only elk the men could bury was a little unborn calf. There's something odd about the unborn calf's mother though. Young and unusually tenacious, she did not go down easy, not even when a shell obliterates half of her head. As it turns out, she was really only temporarily incapacitated...

The Only Good Indians can thought of as a book with two halves and two main characters. Lewis leads the first half of the book, with secondary characters in his orbit such as Peta (his wife), his old buddies from the reservation, and his coworkers from the post office. The second half of the book is driven by Denorah, the daughter of one of Lewis's old reservation buddies and Thanksgiving massacre accomplices, Gabe. In her orbit are some characters from Lewis's old life, mostly Indians who never did manage to leave the reservation.

The transition that bridges the two parts is, I think, the part where readers will diverge in their appreciation for the book. It's... rocky to be sure, sort of like, going to work and then realising in the middle of the work day that you've been dreaming all along. The reappearance of Deer Head Woman is like a rock skipping over the surface of a once tranquil lake, a disturbance that unravels Lewis's mind bit by poisonous bit.

One of SGJ's greatest skills is his ability to have us buy-in to whatever's happening on the page. He navigates mental health issues, superstition, guilt and desire in the Book of Lewis with a delicate touch. But eventually, even a man who has made it out of the reservation must answer the irresistible call of the void when all his luck runs out. In the Book of Denorah, he gives the kid all the reasons she needs to thrive, to go places with her hard-won basketball abilities. Then, he cranks that up to an 11 because now it isn't just about scoring, but surviving.

But once you get over that hump, The Only Good Indians is a wild ride that doesn't let up. It pits undying vengeance and the ancestral memory of the herd against characters deserving and undeserving, and the world is all the more interesting (and bloodier) for it.