…[T]here was a sea of green eyes staring back at him from right there, where there was just supposed to be frozen grass and distance.
It was a great herd of elk, waiting, blocking him in …
– From The Only Good Indians
The plot is simple: Four friends, Ricky, Lewis, Gabe and Cassidy, decide they will provide elk for the entire Blackfeet Reservation for the winter. What follows is a slaughter of a herd that leaves the four men shaken at their own behavior, emphasized in their memories by one pregnant elk that refused to die. Ten years later, the consequences of their actions come down on them and their families.
Simple plots work by how they are fashioned, by the unfolding of events revealing character and resonating with life as we understand it: The Only Good Indians explores the friendship of these men, unveiling their background as they grew up together, and how life on the Reservation offers only so many directions. A quick read providing strong gut punches along the way, Jones’ portrait of life on the Blackfeet Reservation rings true, and his weaving in of ancestral rites and beliefs of the Blackfeet Nation gives texture and substance to the book. Still, it is his portrayal of the four men and the people around them — especially Gabe’s daughter, Denorah — that gives this novel emotional heft. Coming to understand and sympathize with these characters, whether you like them or not, their fate becomes important and the last fifty or so pages are more tense and involving than any ending I’ve read in recent supernatural thrillers.
In his acknowledgements to The Only Good Indians, Jones mentions a debt to Joe Lansdale, and it’s apparent in his prose, a seemingly loose, off-hand, free-wheeling style sometimes verging on stream of consciousness that probably takes a fair amount of work to master and direct. The difference between this and a Lansdale story are Jones’ characters, who are mainly Native American, their perspective based on Reservation life and their interactions with white people; while that latter could be portrayed as entirely problematic, it’s not.
I’m not sure I can say anything more complimentary than that when I picked up The Only Good Indians expecting to read a few pages before having to set it aside, I’d end up twenty to thirty pages deep before coming up for air. Much as I enjoyed the other books I’ve reviewed this year, if you were inclined to read any book I suggested, this should be the one.
THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS by Stephen Graham Jones (2021; Saga Press)
310 pages
ISBN: 978-1982136451
Review by Randy Money
