Native Americans use every
part of the elk after a kill. When four young Blackfeet men stumble on a large
herd of elk on lands forbidden to them, they seize the chance to take home such
bountiful game. Unfortunately, they are interrupted by the game warden and
unable to complete a proper kill. This youthful indiscretion will come back to
haunt them in their later years.
On
the surface, being haunted by an elk may not seem terribly scary but Stephen
Graham Jones, who is Blackfeet Native American, makes it very unsettling. The
story weaves between the men’s lives as they’ve gotten older and (mostly)
settled down. The book opens with Lewis who is a postal worker and happily
married. He begins having hallucinations of the elk he and his friends
illegally killed, and he suspects she is back for revenge. He begins to not to
be able to tell what’s real and what isn’t. He’s not even sure he can trust his
wife. This section was the strongest part of the book for me. It’s baffling and
ominous and a little gruesome. After we move on from Lewis’s point of view I
had no idea where the story was going to go, which was exciting, but
unfortunately the plot lost a lot of its steam. While there are still
intriguing moments throughout the rest of the book, the pacing started to slow
to the point that it became a struggle to read at times. However, I did enjoy
Jones’ writing style. I’m not really sure how to describe it other than it felt
more conversational.
Though
it’s a little uneven, I can’t say I hated this book or even disliked it. It was
different from anything I’ve read previously. Lewis’s section might be worth
the read alone. If you think you can handle the pacing in the second half of
the book, and you’re looking for a new kind of horror, The Only Good Indians
might be worth checking out.
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