First impressions review: The Only Good Indians, by Stephen Graham Jones

 

            This book is a supernatural horror thriller by a Native American author. It follows four Indian men who broke a cardinal rule of hunting 10 years ago when they all lived on the reservation, and now are being hunted in turn. This will be a short review because there are so many interesting twists and turns to this story that I don’t want to give too much away!

            The human characters often link their current lives back to history – a history affects them whether they want it to or not:

The foreman interviewing him had been thick and windburned and sort of blond, with a beard like a Brillo pad. When he reached across the table to shake Ricky’s hand…the modern world had fallen away for a blink and the two of them were standing in a canvas tent, the foreman in a cavalry jacket, and Ricky…wasn’t thinking at all of the paper on the table between them that he’d just made his mark on.

Against those often dark jokes of what it means to be “Indian1” (an identity that emerges from being viewed and oppressed as a single group) you also get references to being Crow versus Blackfoot – two groups who used to be enemies but are mostly just joking antagonists now. Until you start to wonder who you can trust, of course! And then there is the weaving of modern experiences into tradition, or vice versa:

an old man with stubby-thin braids is recounting the story of that one time the Girl played a game for the whole tribe. How each dribble shook the ground so hard that over in the Park great mountainsides of snow were calving off…How each time the ball arced up into the sky it was merging with the sun…This win isn’t just for pride, Denorah tells herself…It’s for her tribe, her people, it’s for every Blackfeet from before, and after.

            Unusually, this book does a really good job being genuinely scary and suspenseful while also making you sympathize with the monster. The Elk Woman’s revenge is brutal, consisting of mind-games that get the victim to destroy themselves as much or more than direct physical attacks2. But since we get to see multiple scenes from her POV, we also understand the pain and anger and confusion that drives her. The idea of history haunting you, of events cycling back around, comes back here too. But the cycle can be broken.

 

1. Including the title of the book, of course, from the racist saying: ‘The only good Indian is a dead Indian’

2. Though this might be a rough one if you don’t like to read about pet deaths. Of course, a revenge-driven elk would go after a hunter’s dogs!

 

Overall recommendation: If you like ghost stories or supernatural horror and are looking for something a bit different from the more common gothic or Lovecraftian fare, check this one out!

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