He takes us from snow stilled hunting grounds to a modern-day makeshift sweat lodge, and there is a reverence in these places. Jones writes about cold November hunting grounds that evoke a time when horsemen were in control, and being Native was neither good nor bad, but free. The setting makes one wonder, what could be lurking out there? Highways cut through vast prairies only interrupted by a rogue barn house or pumpjack. The sky feels bigger there as if the horizon reaches well beyond the mountains. Jones’ descriptive writing of the landscape is so evocative that readers can smell the heady scent of manure, the mild sweetness of corn and grain in the air. The wide-open fields seem equal parts ancient and modern as scenes flow seamlessly between basketball games to coming-of-age rituals that make up the daily lives of these characters. Stephen Graham Jones’ novel The Only Good Indians transports readers to the northwest, shifting between North Dakota, Montana, and the frigid outskirts of a Blackfeet reservation.
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