New Books: History, Violence, and Family in Agee's 'The Bones of Paradise'

Award-winning author and Adele Hall Professor Jonis Agee's newest novel The Bones of Paradise hits bookshelves August 2. This multigenerational family saga is set in the unforgiving Nebraska Sand Hills in the years following the massacre at Wounded Knee.

From publisher Harper Collins: "A kaleidoscopic portrait of misfits, schemers, chancers, and dreamers, 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. Intimate and epic, The Bones of Paradise is a remarkable achievement: a mystery, a tragedy, a romance, and an unflagging exploration of the beauty and brutality, tenderness and cruelty that defined the settling of the American West."

"A deceptively leisurely, intensely heart-rending historical Western about greed and love gone wrong, set in the Sand Hills of Nebraska 10 years after the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre of the Lakota Sioux at the Pine Ridge Reservation in nearby South Dakota.

"Hoping to reunite his family and win back his wife, Dulcinea, rancher J.B. Bennett is on his way to retrieve his older son, Cullen, from his father, Drum, who has raised the 19-year-old for 10 years. When J.B. stops to examine the body of a recently strangled young Lakota Sioux named Star, someone he evidently knows shoots him dead. Down-and-out cowboy Ry Graver stumbles across the bodies and is also shot, but only wounded, by the same or perhaps another unseen assailant. Soon Dulcinea returns to the ranch, hoping to rebuild her relationships with Cullen and his 15-year-old brother, Hayward, who was raised by J.B. after Drum took Cullen and Dulcinea left for reasons that emerge slowly and make cruel sense only within the context of Drum’s belief in his family’s destiny. Dulcinea hires a creepily attractive lawyer, Percival Chance, to prove J.B. deeded the ranch to her and hires Graver to help her manage the farm. Dulcinea’s best friend is Star’s sister Rose, whom she met while teaching at Pine Ridge. Both want to learn the murderer’s identity, but while Rose wants revenge and believes the killings have to do with Wounded Knee—Agee (The River Wife, 2007, etc.) doesn’t scrimp on gruesome detail in recounting the massacre attended by most of the novel’s male characters—Dulcinea fears that the guilty party is someone she cares about. Meanwhile, local ranchers itching to sell their oil drilling rights pressure Dulcinea to go along. She resists; Rose and Dulcinea are women strong enough to cow John Wayne.

"This sexy, violent, intricate Western is ultimately a love letter to the Sand Hills, 'where all was alive, all living, in one form or another.'"

More praise for The Bones of Paradise

"Agee’s emotionally rich tale is as wild and sprawling as the Midwestern plains. This is the Nebraska Sandhills a decade after the army’s massacre of more than 200 Lakota at Wounded Knee in 1890. When middle-aged white rancher J.B. Bennett and the younger Native American Star are murdered, apparently together, their families collide. J.B.’s wife, Dulcinea, estranged from her sons through the machinations of his J.B.’s father, Drum, seeks reconciliation with her boys even as she wrestles to maintain rights to the ranch that Drum wants back, no matter the means. Meanwhile, Rose’s efforts to solve the murder of her sister, Star, threaten her long friendship with Dulcinea. The evolving friendship of Dulcinea and Rose is a poignant counterpoint to the cruelties born of ignorance and greed in the face of cultural difference. The story’s several parts—gritty Western, family saga, mystery—work together for a memorable tale of heartbreak and redemption." — Publishers Weekly

"A haunting tale . . . Agee brilliantly interweaves two stories of loss, guilt, and vengeance, which play out against the vivid backdrop of the [Nebraska] Sand Hills . . . Beautifully rendered and thought-provoking." — Booklist (starred review)

"Deadwood has nothing on Nebraska’s Sand Hills. Jonis Agee serves up a gritty, bloody romance set a decade after Wounded Knee. Half murder mystery and half family saga, The Bones of Paradise is a spirited reweaving of history." — Stewart O’Nan, bestselling author of A Prayer for the Dying

"The harsh and unrelenting weather and landscape of northern Nebraska mirrors the hard and desperate lives of its inhabitants in this powerful historical novel set in the aftermath of Wounded Knee. . . . The beauty of the language creates a stunning portrait of a momentous and often brutal era." — Bill Cusumano, Square Books, Oxford, MS

"From the opening image of a ‘windmill slowly clanking in a wobbly circle’ to the sublime final sentence, Jonis Agee’s The Bones of Paradise is a beautifully written epic that seamlessly intertwines a family’s history with a region’s, and, ultimately, with a nation’s. This is an ambitious novel." — Ron Rash, New York Times bestselling author of Above the Waterfall

"An excellent historical novel that captures the essence of the west along with an action filled story that keeps you on the edge of your seat." — Deon Stonehouse, Sun River Books (Staff Pick), Sun River, Oregon

"A lovely, tough-as-nails story." — Amanda, Inkwood Books, Tampa, FL

"Highly recommending." — Andrea Jones, Galaxy Bookshop, Hardwick, VT

"The majestic beauty of Agee’s language captures the land, the people, and one family’s story that a sea boarder might appreciate but never fully understand. . . . Nebraska’s for believers. Agee is one of its poets." — Todd Miller, Arcadia Books, Spring Green, WI

“This is a book which I will enthusiastically sell to anyone. It is now two weeks since reading Bones of Paradise and I think more highly of the writing each day. I also find myself convinced that the author’s attempt to explain the power of the Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee in its time and place is outstanding." — Larry Yoder, Floor Manager, The Bookies, Denver, CO