Onyx reviews: The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

Reviewed by Bev Vincent, 09/27/2020

Their crime might not seem like it merits a death warrant. Four young members of the Blackfeet Nation break a longstanding tribal rule by hunting on lands reserved for the Elders. For their sins, they are forced to forfeit all the meat they took that day, and they're banned from hunting on the reservation for ten years.

By the time those years have passed, their punishment is mostly moot. Some of them have moved away from the reservation, and those who have stayed behind found creative ways to cheat the ban. However, that auspicious hunting day, just before Thanksgiving, has raised the anger of a patient shape-shifting spirit who comes to be known as Elk Head Woman. She is determined to wreak her vengeance on these men—and on their loved ones, as well.

The prologue to The Only Good Indians introduces and then quickly dispatches Richard "Ricky" Boss Ribs, who split from the reservation years ago and now works on a drilling crew in North Dakota. He's away from the reservation, but not far enough to keep the avenging spirit from finding and doing away with him.

The book proper opens with what appears to be its protagonist, Lewis A. Clarke, another of the original foursome who is also living away from the reservation and has escaped from some of the problems on his "cultural dance card." He's been married for ten years, has a good job and a nice house. However, things take a turn for the worse when someone kills his dog and he starts having visions of the Elk Head Woman. Paranoia overtakes him as he begins to suspect that people around him are possessed. He becomes an unreliable narrator, and readers will find themselves wondering where the evil in the situation truly lies as he begins to take more drastic action to fend off his enemy.

This section, which takes up over a third of the book, includes the back story of the hunting misadventure that caused the men's problems. This part of the novel goes in a direction many readers won't expect, which makes it all the more effective and shocking.

Then the scene changes to a section called "Sweat Lodge Massacre," which takes up most of the rest of the novel. Gabriel Cross Guns and Cassidy "Cass" Sees Elk (aka Cassidy Thinks Twice), the two Blackfeet who stay behind, organize a sweat lodge for a young man who has strayed from the path. They hope he will have a vision that will bring him back to the straight-and-narrow. Jones describes the preparations for this ritual in detail. The shapeshifting force of vengeance has other ideas. Gabe and Cass are aware of what happened to Ricky and Lewis, but they don't understand how their lives might be affected, too.

Jones, who is also Blackfeet, writes with an insider's knowledge of Native American traditions, as well as the reality of being "Indian" in the 21st century. (The characters in the book refuse to adopt some of the more contemporary terms applied to aboriginal people. They call themselves Indians.). Even those who have fully embraced all the modern conveniences and technologies of the modern era still hearken back to older days, although sometimes in a somewhat self-deprecating fashion.

He uses a unique vernacular and rhythm that captures the speech patterns of his people. He also subverts the horror genre by letting readers get to know his four errant characters before he unleashes violence upon them. At this stage in their lives, they're good, decent men, but they are being called to task for a single misdeed a decade ago. Where will readers' sympathies lie? It's a moving target once they come to understand the avenging spirit's reasons for its anger. And, yet, it also runs the risk of losing sympathies when its scope widens to take in innocent bystanders, including Denorah, Gabriel's teenage daughter and rising basketball star, who becomes one of the novels strongest characters.

The finale is an exhilarating romp across the reservation as a particularly resourceful character tries to stay one step ahead of the Elk Head Woman and finally put an end to the curse it represents.