Return of the Bones won BEST HISTORICAL FICTION for the NEW MEXICO / ARIZONA BOOK AWARDS and an INTERNATIONAL LATINO BOOK AWARD for BEST EBOOK. A dazzling epic of ancestry, love and forgiveness.
Follow the journey of the last two remaining members of the Pecos Pueblo on their quest to bring back the bones of their ancestors to the ruins of their family pueblo. The 2,067 skeletons were dug up from their resting place 83 years earlier. In present day and across the miles, the wind carries their cries to Grandfather, who hears the bones longing for home.
Hollow-Woman and Grandfather are the last of the Pecos people, but Hollow-Woman is not interested in ancient family skeletons. She works at an Indian casino and is of the modern ways, while Grandfather is a shaman and values tradition. She hopes the road trip will heal their broken hearts.
Grandfather fashions a magical dream catcher to help Hollow-Woman experience their ancestors' lives, to hurl her into the past, so his granddaughter may come to love the missing bones as he does.
Genre: FICTION / LiteraryAround 29,000 books sold. 147 reviews with a 4.0 out of 5 star ranking.
“You are wrong, Woman!” Grandfather pounded the earth with his staff. “There are graves buried deep below this earth. Six centuries of death, living, joys and sorrows are sifted into these ashes. Strong winds may have mixed the dirt of other pueblos with ours, but deep beneath this layer of dust our family is buried. Like dew on my heart, you have bellyached that your friends had cousins, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, and you had no one but a tired, old man. Here is your family, in the red earth of Pecos.” He scooped a handful of dirt, opened her hand and spilled the dirt into her palm. He closed her fist and squeezed.
“Your family lived on this red earth since the year 1300. Before that time, we were known as the Forked Lightning people who climbed from the arroyo to this ridge and built an impenetrable fortress. Our people were born here; they married here; they made love here; they died here. You say this is a ghost pueblo and you are right. Pecos chimes a death knell since the thief stole the others and took them far away from the land that nourished them. Tears flow from the skies for thousands ripped from the earth. Can you not feel the earth shudder like a body racked with grief? Can you not see how tears, of those left behind, moisten the earth because they mourn the missing? Can you not hear the wind sigh with longing?”
He shoved the royal ceremonial staff into her hands and squeezed her fingers around it. “Feel your people’s pride and imagine this staff must have been something to look at in those days when the Pecos governor pounded it against the rich dirt, and his people surveyed their bounty. Now, the staff is dull and can you not see their disenchantment with their invaders?”
He pushed the staff to her ear. “Listen to your inheritance and the cries of your people.” He lifted the staff to her nose. “Inhale their blood.”
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Translated by Federico Campana
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