'The Only Good Indians' is a Haunting Native American Horror Story

It doesn’t take long for Stephen Graham Jones’ new horror novel The Only Good Indians to claim its first victim. Richard Boss Ribs, a Blackfeet native, finds himself inside a North Dakota watering hole crowded with white roughnecks. Four beers in, the line for the bathroom is too long, so Ricky gives up his seat to relieve himself outside. Wary, he knows it wouldn’t take much for the dark parking lot to become the scene of another cowboys and Indians tussle, especially with all the eyes trained on him.

Only this time, something unexpected—seemingly supernatural—manipulates the fate he fears. “Indian Man Killed in Dispute Outside Bar,” reads the local newspaper in the aftermath. “That’s one way to say it,” writes Jones, a searing line that ends the novel’s opening salvo.

Of course, the headline is too curt; there’s a story behind the story, one that The Only Good Indians begins to unravel with phantasmal terror.

Read more on my monthly "Off the Page" column with LibroMobile:

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